


Blue Christmas

by morallygreywaren (DontDrinkColdCoffee)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Blackmail, Cabeswater - Freeform, Christmas, Cunnilingus, Dreams, F/M, Feelings, Fights, First Time Blow Jobs, Flirting in Latin, Hand Jobs, Holidays, Jealousy, Kidnapping, M/M, Magic, Manipulation, Plotty, Possession, Prophecy, Saving the Day, Slow Build, Snow, The Third Sleeper, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-04 06:31:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 57,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5324027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontDrinkColdCoffee/pseuds/morallygreywaren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“But what if the Third Sleeper is not a monster? What if it’s something so deceivingly real, its power lies not in destroying their quest, but in taking it from them?”<br/>A speculative Adventure for the December before they find Glendower.<br/>Contains kidnapping by family members, possession by supernatural entities, ghost best friends, confused boyfriends, deceit, dream things, ill-timed kisses, well-timed kisses, "dick"-jokes and a whole bunch of Christmas love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Until The Raven King comes out, every speculative fanfiction on who the third sleeper is, how Gansey dies and how our two main ships get together (or not) is fair game. This is my take on all three of these things.
> 
> Endless thanks to [alchemistique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique). This would look nothing like it does without you.
> 
> Title is probably the worst pun ever on the [Christmas Classic](https://open.spotify.com/track/3L5JnUUGqtSpHl4Lr69eKD).

Christmas at 300 Fox Way used to be Blue’s favorite time of the year.

It was a feeling of giddy peace that overcame her when she heard Maura whistling “Jingle Bells” for the first time and have Calla slam a door and shout “IF I HAVE THAT STUCK IN MY HEAD NOW I WILL MAKE YOU REGRET IT,” just to hear Jimi sing-song, “No worries, you will!” and a muffled groan from Calla’s room, because you didn’t necessarily have to be psychic to know that.

She would try to dismantle Orla’s attempts to hang mistletoe over every door by pointing out that they weren’t much use in a house where everyone was related and most visitors came on business.

“You’re just jealous because you can’t kiss anyone,” Orla would say, to which Blue would heartily respond: “Oh, I’d kiss you in a second, because there’s no chance in hell you’d be my true love, and even if you were, I don’t think I’d miss you.”

Persephone used to predict when “Last Christmas” came on in exchange for drinks, effectively saving everyone from having their earbuds ruined year after year.

The smell of eggnog wafting everywhere, Maura burning every batch of cookies until Blue took over and on everyone trying to guess what presents the others had gotten for them, the only psychic activity in which Blue could participate, because she was the only one who knew where everyone hid theirs.

It would never be like that again.

Gwenllian danced past Blue’s room, singing I gave you my heart, my heart, my heart, but the very next day, a medley Blue immediately loathed, because it reminded her of Persephone’s death and all the Christmases that were lost to her.

She curled up in a ball between her bedsheets and tried to ignore the tugging at her heart when the smell of cinnamon came up to her room. It was the first year Maura had gotten her cookies right on the first try.

Blue shook her head at herself, deciding that she was definitely too young for nostalgia. Because something else was different this Christmas as well – it was going to be the first one she’d spend having friends.

It was going to be the first Christmas she’d spend being in love.

No, no, don’t, she chided herself, as if not thinking it would make it less true. She ducked into the phone room, her fingers reaching to dial the number on muscle memory.

“Hello?” Gansey’s voice sounded croaky through her tinny phone and not like it should be able to lay her insides in knots as much as it did.

“Hello,” she breathed back, “I was trying to reach the North Pole. Is this Santa Claus’s wish factory?”

“You were trying to call Santa Clause at this ungodly hour?” Blue could detect a faint smile in the way he spoke, the soft padding of footsteps as he walked to the kitchen/bathroom of Monmouth Manufacturing in the background. “This has to be a pretty important wish, young lady.”

“It is,” Blue said, so quietly she almost swallowed half of what came next, “Christmas is a very important holiday to me.”

She held her breath as Gansey let all of his out in a rush.

“And I was wondering,” she drilled her fingers around the phone cord, “if I could spend it with… people that are important to me. You know. My aunt makes a pretty terrific fruit cake and my mom knows lots of party tricks.”

“Jane,” Gansey said, his voice already carrying everything Blue needed to know, “I would love to. I can’t think of a better Christmas, in fact. But my parents only see me like 20 days a year, and – ”

“No, it’s okay,” Blue said. She didn’t really know why she had asked anyway, it was just that something had been feeling off and that maybe this could’ve made it right again. It would have to do without.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I’m sure Ronan, or Adam, you know they would come, even Noah, if he can. It’s just me who’s otherwise preoccupied, I’m afraid.”

She nodded even though she knew he couldn’t see it. “I was gonna invite you all,” she said, “I just wanted to ask you first.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, and she hated how she made him feel guilty when it was her who should be disappointed at herself.

“No, it’s alright,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good night, Jane,” Gansey whispered, and Blue waited until she heard the line go dead before she let the phone sink to her chest and her head to the wall.

She tried to breathe normally again. But it didn’t help feeling like something had happened that had lifted her world of its hinges, and it was impossible for her to put it back.

* * *

 

“Why did you touch it alone?” Neeve said through her teeth, her eyes widening as the spidery creature in front of them groaned back to life.

Piper looked smug, and she knew it. It was not an expression she thought worthwhile to hide, especially since she considered opportunism to be one of her most favorable traits.

If this was an action movie, that probably made her the “bad guy,” but if her theory was true, then this also meant she would make it out alive.

Neeve had let go of her in favor of stepping back slightly as the enormous spider wobbled onto all of his eight hairy, black legs, and Piper could feel her vision go blurry from the strain this put on her broken leg.

“If you could hurry up adjusting to being awake again,” she pressed and gestured towards the creature, “I would really appreciate it if you could fix my leg.”

The spider opened its eyes. All eight of them.

Neeve shuddered next to her. “But I don’t understand,” she whispered, “this had to be Glendower. I’ve been tracking the auras of these kids for weeks! They had to lead me to him...”

Piper rolled her eyes and reached over for Neeve’s shoulder to lean on it again.

“So it’s not! So what? I’m sure it’ll be quite grateful we woke it – well, I woke it – and grant me my full mobility again. Or, considering I just lost a pet, it would look quite fetching in a collection of – ”

“Don’t touch it!” Neeve grabbed her wrist more forcefully than Piper deemed necessary as she reached out to pet the spider on the head.

Spiders this size usually possessed some sort of poison, but Piper had yet to see it open its mouth and considered it relatively harmless for the time being.

The spider took a cautious step towards them, all of its eyes trained carefully on Piper’s still outreached hand. Neeve tensed under her arm.

Then the spider extracted one long, wiry leg and touched Piper’s finger.

It didn’t sting. In fact, Piper was certain it should have felt at least slightly unpleasant, but it did not feel much like anything.

She didn’t know what she had expected, but it hadn’t been what happened next.

The cave they were in filled with a silvery glow that seemed to emanate from the spot where the spider had touched her, and Piper was certain she heard a terrifyingly human sigh as the spider gingerly sat down on the earth, its legs contracting and the glow getting stronger, until both her and Neeve had to shield their eyes against it.

When she took her hands away, a young girl was standing in front of her, brushing some imaginary dirt from her white dress that still held some of the glow.

Then the girl looked up at them, her eyes a dark and observant brown and her smile just the side of sugary that it made Piper want to strangle her. After she’d gotten her favor.

“Oh.” Neeve seemed to relax. “Are you – ” She broke off.

The girl turned to Neeve, and Piper was glad not to have that smile directed towards her anymore.

“Yes,” she said, her voice far too voluminous and throaty for a body like hers, “and no.

I can help, but it won’t show.

Some can dream and I’d not go;

One will die – If you say so.”

Piper blinked. This whole getting a favor for waking someone business started to require far more time than she had the average patience for.

“What is this?” she asked Neeve. “I thought I was going to get something out of this.”

“No,” Neeve said, not taking her eyes off the girl, comprehension dawning slowly on her face. “This is not Glendower. She’s a riddle for us.”

The girl laughed at that and put a strand of hair behind her ear, her voice reduced to a shrill giggle that made an involuntary shiver run down Piper’s spine.

She knew why she’d never befriended any giggling girls at high school, the sound was just too horrible. Come to think of it, she’d never actually befriended anyone at high school.

“Arguably,” the girl answered, and Piper detected another thing she found incredibly off-putting about her: She had a finicky English accent.

Piper suppressed her eye-roll only barely. “Is this one of those specific magical phrasings, that we have to figure out? Because if so, I’m fairly certain I’m going to bleed to death in the meantime.”

The girl seemed to notice the blood sluicing down Piper’s leg only then and jumped to her side. “Oh, but I can fix that!”

She crouched down and grabbed Piper’s foot, pressed her other hand to her knee, and Piper could feel a warm energy spreading through her calf, mending the shot wounds in her skin and the bones broken beneath it.

Out of the corner of her eye, Piper noticed the appraising look Neeve was giving her and it made her slightly mad.

“Not another witch,” she mumbled as the girl patted her knee and got up again.

“Oh, but she’s not a witch,” Neeve said, leaving Piper who was capable of standing on her own now, and reached forward to touch the girl’s cheek, who, miraculously, let her do it. “She’s a projection.”

Piper raised own of her perfectly plucked eyebrows. “A projection?” Apart from the whole spider thing, the girl seemed awfully corporeal to her. “Of what, exactly?”

Neeve stepped back, but never took her eyes off the girl. “Henrietta.”

The girl turned to Piper then, her smile holding a sudden, unsettling quality to it and eyes so huge it seemed like she was still a spider and able to eat Piper alive.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique) is everything.

Gansey had chosen the public library for researching more about Gwenllian and Artemus’ relationship to Glendower. This close to the holidays, the Aglionby library was crowded to the point that he couldn’t concentrate anymore, and going back to Monmouth alone when Ronan and Noah weren’t there felt weird now that he was so used to it being populated by his friends.

The end of the year always made Gansey anxious. It seemed to dangle progress he hadn’t made in front of his face, like all the tiny achievements he’d had over the year suddenly meant nothing with a new one empty of any of them looming over him.

Especially such an important year, as his dad liked to remind him, in which he would graduate and pick a college. But also the year in which he would find Glendower. Had to.

He was chewing on the end of his pen and glancing around the library, which was fairly unspectacular as libraries went, but when he closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, he could feel its secrets wafting through the air and the answer to all his questions just waiting to be put together. He never wanted to leave this place.

“Excuse me?” A voice woke him from his daydreams. “Do you by any chance know where the section on local history is? I’m looking for a book on first English settlements in Henrietta.”

“Oh, I don’t work here,” Gansey told the girl in front of him with a smile. She was about his age, and had she been a boy, he would’ve wondered why he’d never seen her in school.

She seemed to belong to Henrietta in a way most of his classmates seemed to do, showcasing their expensive chinos and Ralph Lauren sweaters, just that this girl managed to go about a bit more subtly.

The way her brown hair waved over her shoulder reminded Gansey of Helen, but he could not immediately place her accent.

“Oh, I know that,” she said and laughed a little. “But you looked like you might know your way around here.”

She raised one of her shoulders in an elegant sort of shrug that somehow looked both casually reserved and carefully disinterested. She was definitely from England.

Her gaze came to rest on the three different books about different periods in Welsh history lying open in front of him.

“Well, I do know where the history section is, since that is where I came from,” Gansey said and slowly got up. She watched him with a tiny amused smile. “But I don’t know how much they have on local history. Is it for a school project?”

He instantly wondered if she was one of Blue’s classmates. He glanced at the very real pearls in her ears as he lead the way to the history section. Blue would’ve never spoken to her if she was.

“No, it’s for my parents, actually,” she replied. “We’ve just moved here and they sent me to run work errands so they can begin their new project as soon as possible.”

“Your parents are doing a project on the local history of Henrietta?” Gansey was intrigued.

They stopped in front of an aisle and Gansey motioned for her to go in before him. She did a barely noticeable curtsey before doing so.

“Yes,” the girl replied, “they’re anthropologists. Every year a different research project, and this year it’s early English settlements in Virginia at the example of Henrietta’s geological characteristics, or something like that.”

Gansey watched her as she studied the books in front of her. She had a clever little nose and an interested glint in her eye that could easily be mistaken for mischief as her mouth pulled up in a half-smile when she reached for a book.

She had an aura of ancient otherness to her that Gansey could imminently relate to.

“Do your parents also research caves?” He asked, trying to sound inconspicuous.

She turned to him with a half-snort. “Is there any other geological characteristic of Henrietta? I could swear I have talked about nothing but caves ever since my parents started preparing for this trip.”

Gansey cocked his head in contemplation as she turned back to the book and skimmed its glossary. A girl whose parents were British anthropologists and professionally explored caves chose the one day he went to the public library to come there as well – and asked him to help her.

If only he believed in coincidences.

“Sorry,” he asked, “what’s your name?”

She looked up like someone who had been completely immersed in something would. He knew that was how he looked like most of the time his friends tried to talk to him.

“Henrietta,” she said.

“Hm?” he asked.

“Yes, my parents have absolutely no sense of humor. I’m sure they picked this town just to spite me.” An easy and apologetic smile spread on her face, like she knew of the dissonance between her age and her name.

“Mine, too. I’m Richard Gansey. The Third. But please just call me Gansey.” He offered his hand to her, and thought that he should not have been surprised how fierce her grip was.

“Gansey.” It sounded strange in her accent. “I like that.”

He clasped his hands together and gave her his most favorable smile. “Say, Henrietta – what do you know about Welsh kings?”

* * *

It was not unusual to have female laughter fill the air at Monmouth anymore, not since Blue had joined the group around Gansey. But whatever the sound that rang through the staircase was, Ronan needed exactly one second to determine it was not Blue, and another to decide that he didn’t like it.

Adam stopped from where Ronan was holding up the door for him. “Isn’t Blue still in school?” he asked and turned to Ronan.

Ronan shrugged. “That’s not Blue.”

He planted the small bag of fast food he had bought for Adam in his hands, climbed up the stairs and kicked the door open.

Gansey was standing in the middle of the vast studio that was Monmouth, bed unmade, desk in disarray, and was showing off his miniature Henrietta to a girl. A girl who looked like one of Declan’s “ex-girlfriends to be,” at that. Poor Ashley, or whatever her name was.

Ronan’s face twisted into an almost involuntary sneer. If Gansey had called them here to meet his new girlfriend, this was not going to go down well.

Adam came up behind him, still clutching the bag of food to warm his hands on it.

“Who’s that?” he whispered, and Ronan tried not to turn around so he could feel the sensation of Adam’s words against his ear go all the way down to his feet.

“Fuck if I know,” he replied, loud enough that Gansey and whoever it was turned around.

“Ah, there they are,” Gansey said, and to Ronan’s chagrin he was wearing his prince of Henrietta smile plastered all over his face. New girlfriend it was, then. But where did she even come from?

“Ronan, Adam, please meet Henrietta,” Gansey said, and stepped aside so they could get a good view at her. The smile she gave them would’ve put most TV presenters to shame. Ronan didn’t think he had ever seen this many teeth out in the open in his life.

“Henrietta?” Adam asked with a bemused twinkle in his eye and a smile playing around his lips. “Pleasure.”

He extended his hand for her to shake and Ronan could see the hesitation working through her body as she noticed the small marks of grease under Adam’s nails. Her smile grew just a little uneasy before she briefly gripped it and replied, “No, it’s mine,” like they were at a reception.

Ronan overcame the sudden urge to throttle her. At least she didn’t wipe her hands on her coat as she turned to Ronan.

He just sneered at her until he heard Gansey sigh. “What?” he asked, completely ignoring Henrietta’s presence.

“Henrietta has just moved here from England,” Gansey said. “Her parents are anthropologists and she has a lot of knowledge about local caves and access to maps older than the ones in the library.”

“Gansey told me about your search and your special talents,” Henrietta said, her eyes comically wide in what Ronan presumed was fake interest. “That sounds so intriguing! Are you really able to create something out of nothing? That’s an alchemist’s dream!”

Ronan narrowed his eyes at her and offered a brief affirmative grunt. Just as she said the word dream, Ronan noticed the way her hair curled on her shoulder, and he felt like an image from a dream he had had the night before came back to him.

But she couldn’t be from a dream. Ronan would remember.

In that moment, a gush of cold wind blew into the apartment as Blue opened the door, chanting “sorry, sorry, I’m late, I know, had to get out of – ” but stopped short when her eyes landed on Henrietta.

And here people always said Ronan made situations awkward.

“Jane!” Gansey said and Ronan felt oddly like if his hair had been longer he would’ve pushed it back behind his ears just then. “Glad you could make it. This is Henrietta, she said she could help us with the ancient caves around here. And this is – ”

“The psychic’s daughter,” Henrietta interrupted him, and took a few steps towards Blue in a fluid motion, her eyes strangely intense.

“I go by Blue, if you don’t mind,” Blue replied, holding the new girl’s stare without a beat. Ronan wouldn’t have expected any different from her.

Henrietta’s face cracked open in a hysterical sort of smile. “Blue?” she giggled, “Oh, I would love to hear the story behind that nickname.”

“The only nickname I have is ‘Jane’ because Gansey here is unable to call things and people by their real names.” Blue’s tone was almost chilly and Ronan heard Adam suck in a deep breath. He turned slightly so they could share a smile without Gansey noticing.

Henrietta abruptly stopped giggling and her smile grew slightly irritated. “Ah,” she said, “how very American indeed.”

Professor Malory had gotten away with this sort of behavior, but only because he was so old that he would have died before he would’ve been able to comprehend that the United States weren’t British colonies anymore. At the moment, Blue looked like she might share Ronan’s wish to do physical harm to Henrietta.

Not that he ever would. But he would definitely have to talk to Gansey about his deeply concerning trust in random pretty strangers who talked to him on the streets.

Gansey cleared his throat. “Shall we?” he asked and gestured towards the couch and the new books he had brought from the library.

“At your leisure,” Henrietta chirped and sank down on one of the cushions. Blue grit her teeth and Ronan caught Adam barely suppressing an eye-roll.

This was going to be interesting. And by interesting he meant devastatingly awkward.

“Anybody else for a beer?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise she's no Mary Sue. What do you think about Henrietta?
> 
> Tell me here or on [tumblr](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask)!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique) also did a marvellous beta job on this one.

Piper supposed this was what she got for always throwing a temper tantrum when Colin had taken her to obscure places. It could, in fact, always get worse, she realized.

She had spent two days tagging after Neeve in the outskirts of Henrietta, deeper into the woods then she doubted any human soul had ever been before. At this point she wasn’t sure how much time had passed since she’d last eaten something that had been prepared in a kitchen, but she made a mental note to write a blog post about wildlife exploration trips as an ideal way to lose weight in one of her online communities.

She’d love to see some of those skinny bitches putting themselves through this madness voluntarily.

After she had nearly collapsed for the second time that day, Neeve finally seemed to have found what she was looking for: A cabin in the woods.

Or it was more of a bungalow, Piper supposed. There was only so much time for inspection of her surroundings before she lay down on a surprisingly comfortable couch and let unconsciousness take her away.

When she came to again, she grabbed a banana from a counter in what she identified as the kitchen and looked out onto the clearing the bungalow was surrounded by.

The sun was about to set, and Neeve was busy drawing lines in a star shape onto the mildly frozen ground. She stopped when she saw Piper approaching and took a deep breath with a huge smile on her face.

“Isn’t this place just perfect?”

“Depends what for. Getting rid of unwanted corpses and newborns, maybe. This is Henrietta, after all.” Piper had long decided that she wasn’t going to be taken in by either this weird woman with the strangely lovely hands or the girl with the annoying accent.

No, she would just wait until an opportunity to get rid of preferably both of them presented itself, then fake Colin’s death and live off the insurance for the rest of her days.

“Don’t you feel it?” Neeve asked and took her hand, leading her to stand on one of the five lines she had just drawn.

If Piper was being honest, and paid more attention than she had initially planned on, she could feel a small thrum pulse through her body that her heartbeat seemed to align with.

She looked up to find Neeve still smiling at her from where she was setting down a bowl and filling it with water. “See? It’s almost like the energy is directing everything around here. It should be really easy to summon Cabeswater.”

Piper nodded with a distant smile. She had no idea what Neeve was talking about, but found that she didn’t much care. The energy she felt when she was standing on the line was tantalizing, and she wished her prior tries to tap into such energy would have felt as successful as just that.

“What are you doing?” she asked Neeve as she set down two candles in front of and behind her, the one to her right with a supernaturally large flame.

“Preparing the ritual, no?” Neeve was still smiling, but Piper felt her initial irritation coming back as the energy pulse got weaker in her.

She marched into the kitchen and started chopping away at vegetables and a chicken she found in a miraculously filled freezer, watching Neeve sit on one end of her pentagram – that was the word – and staring into the distance.

Piper vaguely remembered tuning in to her morning show a few times when she hadn’t been able to sleep. Neeve had never looked as creepy as she did just then in them.

In her shows, Neeve had always seemed like a cool aunt, the one that took you away to hidden places on family gatherings and showed you how to smoke real cigarettes.

Maybe it was the time she had spent “between the mirrors” she kept going on about that did this to her. Whatever “between the mirrors” might’ve meant, Piper hadn’t really been conscious enough to understand it fully.

Long after the sun had set and Piper had had two servings of roast chicken and three big glasses of wine, Neeve opened the door to their bungalow and sunk down on the couch with a dazed expression.

“I can’t do it.” Her voice was slightly wobbly and Piper overcame a sudden apprehension that she might cry. There were only so many emotions that she could deal with on a regular day, and this was not a regular day to begin with.

“What?”

“Summon Cabeswater! I did everything correctly, I have scryed and spoken to it many times, and it was always benevolent, if not exactly cooperative, but today,” she abruptly shook her head, “nothing. I can see it, but I can’t feel it!”

She got up and started walking up and down in front of the couch. Piper followed her movement with her eyes, unsure whether to be concerned or amused. She went with the latter, in any case.

“And this is what I just don’t understand,” Neeve continued, “I have set up the ritual on the most powerful spot of the ley line I could find, I have tapped directly into its energy, and still – ”

She kicked the kitchen table, an act that seemed weirdly out of place coming from someone like Neeve.

“I guess that’s what you get for working with someone who used to do entertainment,” Piper commented her own thoughts, just to have Neeve turn around and stare accusingly at her.

“Don’t you dare start to act like Leila Polotsky!”

Piper shrugged. “It’s not my fault that apparently your powers are insufficient to – ”

She was pretty certain Neeve would have thrown herself at her like a starving lion in that moment, had Henrietta not chosen to saunter into the kitchen just then.

“Oh my,” she said, “the energy in here is quite escalative, don’t you think?”

Both Piper and Neeve only stared at her. “Well, I should have figured.”

Henrietta smiled and sat down on the couch next to Piper with an elegant shrug of her shoulder. “Any news?”

“Cabeswater is being uncommunicative,” Piper said, inching away from Henrietta. There was still something about that girl that gave her the creeps, and not many things in her life had ever accomplished that.

“How odd,” Henrietta commented and put her chin in her hand, “this is such a lovely spot of energy. With the right powers invoked, it should materialize quite neatly.”

Piper could hear Neeve grit her teeth and hid a smile behind her hand pretending to inspect her fingernails.

Henrietta moved her head from one side to another, her eyes resting on Neeve as she did so.

“Hmm,” she said, “is there any possibility to heighten your powers?”

Neeve’s brows furrowed. “How do you mean? I am in full power.”

Henrietta shook her head, still pensively regarding Neeve as if she was a modern painting she tried to wrap her mind around.

“That’s not what I mean. I am thinking of a way to amplify your power, something that you could tap into to make it flow better.”

“You mean like a battery?” Piper supplied ironically, finding the idea of plugging Neeve into anything resembling a socket deathly hilarious. To her surprise, Neeve’s face cleared at that and she smiled at Henrietta.

“Yes,” she said, “there is a way to amplify my powers. And with your help, it shouldn’t be hard to acquire.”

* * *

The next day after school, Blue walked to Monmouth Manufacturing before she had to go to work.

She didn’t really know what she wanted to tell Gansey, she just felt like she overreacted the day before. She had made fun of Henrietta with Adam when they both went home, but she had realized that it was the same jokes they used to make about Gansey, just that with Gansey, they weren’t meant with malice.

And she was no fool, she knew that the nagging feeling in her stomach was jealousy. Jealousy she was not allowed to feel. Not after she had made such a fuss about the situation with Adam.

“Hi,” she said when Gansey opened the door, and the smile that spread on his face when he picked a stray leaf from her hair as a greeting was all it took to make it good again.

“Come in,” he said, “I was about to make hot chocolate. Do you want some?”

Blue nodded and slid her thin coat off to the floor with her schoolbag to follow him to the kitchen/bathroom.

Ronan seemed to be off to wherever Ronan went when he was not at Monmouth, and Noah didn’t come to greet her.

Gansey was stirring a pot on the stove, an apron around his body.

Blue rolled her eyes and slid onto the counter next to him. “So making an oil change in expensive khakis is okay, but God forbid a tiny smear of chocolate even so much as touches your precious sweater, yes?” Her eyes twinkled. “What even is this? Merino wool?”

“Cashmere,” Gansey mumbled, and had the decency to blush. Blue laughed at him, but accepted the cup of hot chocolate with glee in her eyes. It had been a long time since someone had actually handmade hot chocolate for her.

Gansey leaned against the fridge and watched her as he sipped his beverage, a motion so casual yet domestic, it made all the uneasiness she had felt earlier go away. This was Gansey, and even if it was a bit selfish of her, she knew that this look he was giving her now was only hers.

Maybe he would have offered Henrietta hot chocolate, but he wouldn’t have made it for her. Not like that.

Just as Blue was about to say something, Gansey’s phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket, but stopped when he saw the caller ID.

“Who is it?” Blue asked.

“Henrietta.” Think of the devil.

Gansey swallowed and looked up in doubt. Blue understood the question and nodded for him to go ahead. Gansey put her on speakerphone.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hi Gansey,” her accented voice sounding even stranger through the speakers, “this is Henrietta. I have found something really interesting about the cave situation we discussed yesterday that I would like to share with you. Is Blue with you, by any chance?”

Gansey’s and Blue’s expression matched each other in disbelief. Why did she specifically ask for her?

“Yes, she is, actually,” Gansey said and transported the phone from one hand to another.

“Can you two come see this?” Henrietta asked, and continued to describe a location at the outskirts of Henrietta.

Blue tried not to clench her teeth as Gansey made appreciative noises and told her they would be there in a few minutes. Of course she had asked her to come along.

Henrietta was a smart girl, and she must’ve noticed this… something about them yesterday. So that if she included Blue now, Blue would have no reason to be jealous in his eyes, and if she got jealous, Henrietta would be the first to point this out to him, along with how much cooler and laid-back she was.

Blue was churning. She had grown up with Orla Sargent, she knew emotional manipulation when she saw it.

But she just couldn’t keep herself from touching Gansey’s hand in the car on the drive to the location Henrietta had named – these moments alone were so rare and the Pig meant something so special to her.

“Gansey! Blue! Glad you could make it,” Henrietta said when they stepped out of the Pig and gave them air kisses on their cheeks.

Blue tried to catch Gansey’s gaze, but he seemed preoccupied by taking their surroundings in. Did Europeans really do that?

“So yesterday, after everything you’ve told me about this town, I went home and had a look at my parents’ maps and I discovered an anomaly on the maps around these coordinates.” She held up her high-tech compass. Gansey nodded enthusiastically and jotted the numbers down in his journal. It was strange to watch him being lectured for once.

“So today I went to explore the area, and I found a cave behind these rocks. Have you brought your EMF reader?” she asked.

Gansey nodded again and got it out of the trunk. “Great,” Henrietta said. “It took me ages to discover this with mine, but with two we’re gonna be so much faster! Too bad we don’t have more.”

Blue bit on the insides of her cheeks and looked at the back of Gansey’s head. If that girl wanted to make her feel inadequate because she hadn’t brought an EMF reader herself she could wait a long time. Or she simply could’ve asked for Adam instead.

“If I position this EMF reader here,” Henrietta went on, “it starts beeping.”

She put it on the ground in front of the entrance of the cave and it gave a continuous signal of energy. Gansey seemed intrigued.

“Can you place yours over there?” Henrietta pointed to a spot between the rocks on the other side of the entry.

“Of course,” Gansey said and hurried to get there. The EMF was dead for a while, before giving a continuous signal like Henrietta’s as well.

“How strange,” Gansey said and started flicking through his journal for an explanation. “Is it two points around the cave entry?”

“There are five,” Henrietta said. “You notice them if you walk the circle around the cave.”

She showed Gansey how to walk the circle and made little dents in the ground for the other three points.

Blue crossed her arms and leaned against the Pig. Why was she here? She felt redundant and forgotten, something that Maura had always made sure she never was. These standards apparently didn’t apply to privileged kids who went on research trips with their expensive toys.

“And now this is where it gets exciting,” Henrietta went on, “if you move your reader from one point to another, you can see the energy linking them together.”

She demonstrated it by walking towards Gansey with hers and showed him how it never lost its signal. “But it only links the ones that aren’t next to each other. I’m pretty sure it’s a pentagram,” she said.

Blue snapped her head back up and caught the excited gleam in Gansey’s eyes. “A pentagram?” Gansey had abandoned his EMF reader and started taking pictures of the cave with his phone.

“Seriously?” Blue said. “That would mean this cave had been a ritual place once.”

Henrietta shrugged. “I don’t know about rituals. But I thought it might help you.”

Blue pushed herself off of the car and walked to the cave. Something about this didn’t add up. Leys ran in straight lines through the earth – they didn’t suddenly form pentagrams. But where should the energy come from?

She came to stand next to Henrietta when she noticed a shadow in the corner of her eye that seemed to be coming out of the cave. She whirled around.

The shadow belonged to a woman with a wafty walk and strangely lovely hands stretched out towards her. “Neeve?” Blue couldn’t believe her eyes.

Gansey came up behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder, seemingly as surprised as her. The only time he had seen her was when she had vanished in a pentagram like this half a year ago.

Blue took a step towards Neeve, just as Henrietta shouted “no” and grabbed Gansey’s collar to pull him away.

Then Neeve’s face split into a smile, her hands closed over Blue’s arms and her vision was clouded by purple smoke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let the pain begin. 
> 
> I'm not saying I'll tell you what happens to Blue, but you can tell me what you think here or on [tumblr](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask) :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Noah is also in this story, being a little shit as always. [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique) continues to be awesome. Enjoy!

Adam tried knocking at Monmouth Manufacturing, then quickly thought better of it and just snuck in because it was cold outside.

To his surprise, he found the apartment deserted, Gansey’s bed unmade and a strange chocolatey smell coming from the kitchen/bathroom. He hadn’t even known any of its inhabitants could cook, needless to say bake.

He slid his backpack to the ground next to Blue’s. So where were they?

“Gansey?” he tried experimentally.

The door to Ronan’s bedroom opened. “Out and about with the maggot,” Ronan quipped and leaned against the door in a tank top that seemed entirely unseasonal as the ground was frozen over, but accentuated the burly curve of his shoulders.

Adam nodded once. There had been a time when he would’ve felt weird being in Monmouth without Gansey there, but he noticed without marvel that this time was long gone.

“Weren’t we supposed to meet like…now?” It was nothing strange that Blue and Gansey went off on their own – they seemed to get strangely passionate about this whole supernatural thing.

Ronan shrugged and sat down on the couch, so Adam followed suit. “They were making hot chocolate in the kitchen. Then the weird Henrietta chick called.”

“Which one?” Adam asked.

Ronan rolled his eyes. “When I say ‘weird Henrietta chick’ I don’t mean a girl from Henrietta, I mean the one that has to be called like it.”

“Ah,” Adam said and slouched into the cushions as Noah appeared between them, then furrowed his eyebrows. “Is she a part of this now?”

Ronan snorted, “I hope not.”

“She’s like Gansey, isn’t she?” Noah said. Both Adam and Ronan looked at him in horror.

“Like Gansey in snotty and rude and female, you mean,” Adam said.

Ronan laughed. “Three things I didn’t need in my life.”

Noah rolled his eyes but remained silent. Ronan looked out of the window like he was considering if it was about to snow tonight, but Adam felt like there was something troubling him when he started playing with his leather bands.

“I feel like I dreamed about her,” he said after a while, uncharacteristically quiet for Ronan.

“You dreamed her?” Adam asked.

Ronan’s head snapped up. “No, that’s not what I meant,” he got defensive immediately, “Just that I’ve seen her in Cabeswater, but I – ”

“Oh, Ronan,” Noah interrupted him and patted his knee. “Adam’s just jealous, you have to – ”

“Shut up, Noah,” they said in unison and gave each other a small smile when they noticed. Adam just hoped Noah would stop the teasing there – he blushed more easily in winter.

“Just sayi – ” Noah began and then flickered out, something that usually only happened when someone threatened him, but both Ronan and Adam had been calmly sitting there.

“Sometimes I wish I was a ghost,” Ronan said as they were both looking and not looking at the now empty space between them. “No obligations. No responsibilities. Just flickering in and out of being whenever you want to.”

Adam made an appreciative noise, but thought that Noah’s disappearing seemed to happen a lot more involuntarily than he let on.

Ronan shook his head to pick up where he left off. “No, I don’t think I dreamed her. You know I’ve told you about the little girl that helps me get stuff from Cabeswater?”

Adam nodded.

“She has changed what she looks like before. I can only remember when I’m asleep, but I feel like lately she looks a lot like what Princess Gansey brought along yesterday.”

“I know what you mean,” Adam said. “It’s strange, but Henrietta seems familiar to me as well.”

Ronan furrowed his eyebrows. “How?”

“Well, I’ve never left this town – apart from trips to D.C. – and she says she’s just moved here? So I can’t think of a real, physical place where I’ve seen her, but I feel like she’s appeared to me in a vision Cabeswater had shared with me,” Adam said and looked out of the window. The sun had begun to set, early as it did in December, so he was staring back at the reflection of him and Ronan on the couch.

“I don’t know,” Ronan said. “Did she seem like a real person to you?”

Adam thought about it for a moment. “I don’t remember,” he said, and caught Ronan’s gaze in the window, “but don’t you think it’s odd we both seem to know her?”

Ronan nodded, strangely pensive, then glanced sideways at Adam. “Do you – ” But Adam never learned what Ronan had meant to ask him. Reluctantly, Ronan fished after the phone that had begun buzzing uncomfortably in his pocket and took the call with a sigh.

As the tension was broken, Adam started drumming on his knees, trying to appear uninterested, even though there was really only one person Ronan could be talking to. His assumptions were confirmed when Ronan let out a string of colorful curse words like strange music.

If it had been Declan, he probably wouldn’t have bothered to pick up the phone in the first place.

“What happened?” Adam asked as Ronan flung the phone across the table. “Gansey broken down somewhere again?”

Ronan shook his head, a nearly unnoticeable motion and ran his hand along his scalp before turning to him. His eyes were troubled, like he wasn’t sure how Adam would take whatever he was about to say.

It had been a long time since Adam received this sort of special treatment, and the rawness in Ronan’s gaze made him shiver involuntarily. What had happened?

“Blue’s been kidnapped.”

* * *

A coughing fit rose up in Gansey’s throat as the smoke got into his eyes and lungs. At first he’d thought they might have managed to accidentally summon Neeve from the place she had vanished to, but when Gansey had seen the determined smile on her face as her hands closed around Blue’s arms, he had instantly known Neeve was there on a mission, and it included taking Blue with her.

Gansey plucked Henrietta’s hand from his collar. “Thanks,” he said and ran into the middle of the pentagram.

“Blue?” he called into the cave, and knelt down on the ground. The footprints from where Blue and Neeve had been standing were still visible, but Neeve hadn’t just used the smoke for deception to drag Blue into the cave – she had vanished into thin air with her.

Gansey clasped his hand over his mouth and sat back on his heels. He felt bile rising up in his stomach, along with the certainty that there were powers at work he could hold nothing against. He felt very small for a moment.

Henrietta crouched down next to him and placed a hand between his shoulder blades. He wondered whether she did it to support him or to steady herself. She was taking all of this very well for someone who had only been exposed to the shenanigans in his life for one day.

But Gansey needed help. He got up and clapped his hands on his trousers.

“Get in the Pig,” he said and walked towards his Camaro, whipping out his phone to call Ronan, who surprisingly picked up.

“Excuse me?” Henrietta said.

“The car,” Gansey gestured with his hand, anxiety crawling up in his chest like ants. He threw himself in the driver’s seat and needed six tries until the engine finally caught.

Henrietta crossed her arms on the seat next to him and let her eyes roam around the car’s interior. Another day, Gansey might have cared what a girl thought about the chaos, but right then, he needed to fight the feeling of helplessness by doing something.

He could still feel his hand being ripped away from Blue’s shoulder.

“Where are we going?” Henrietta asked, and crouched her feet together so she wouldn’t have to touch a piece of beef jerky that was still lying around down there.

“300 Fox Way,” Gansey said, and added “Blue’s mom,” when he caught Henrietta’s confused expression.

“Oh,” Henrietta said, her voice laced with something that sounded strangely like excitement to him. “The psychic?”

“Yes,” he replied, strained, and gripped the steering wheel tighter.

“Gansey, I don’t think I should be with you,” Henrietta said after a while, just after they had crossed the city limits sign.

He slowed down a little and looked over at her. He could’ve sworn she would’ve wanted to meet Blue’s mom and the other women in a house full of psychics, she hadn’t stopped asking about them the day before.

“Do you really think it’s a good idea to tell the parents of your girlfriend that she has vanished with a strange woman while bringing along another girl?”

“She’s not – ” Gansey began, but was muted by Henrietta’s judgemental stare.

“Could’ve fooled me,” Henrietta said coolly, but her smile was warm when Gansey blushed.

“Just let me out over there.” She pointed at a seemingly random point on the street and Gansey immediately pulled over.

He felt a little stupid and out of himself, and marvelled if it was Henrietta who made him feel this way, or if this was the state he had lived in all along and he had just needed someone new to point it out to him.

“Just call me when you get back,” she said as she closed the door and walked away; and Gansey nodded, as if it had stood without question. Maybe he had just gotten so used to being the one to come up with all the plans that he suddenly couldn’t handle someone taking initiative.

He pulled over at 300 Fox Way just as the sun began to set and rang the bell.

Calla opened the door for him and narrowed her eyes at his face.

“Oh no,” she said, “I’m not sure if I want to let you in. I don’t like that look on your face. Where’s Blue?”

Gansey swallowed and cast his eyes downwards. He hadn’t actually thought about how he would tell Blue’s family.

“Oh no, no, no, no, no,” Calla said, her voice progressively getting louder with each syllable. “You don’t come here, a few weeks before Christmas to – ” She broke off but took a step back to let Gansey in anyway.

“What’s happening?” Maura emerged from the kitchen to see Calla ranting at Gansey.

“First Maura, then Persephone, now Blue, are you here to tell me that it’s just a matter of time until I vanish, too?”

The last time Calla had shouted at someone like this it had been Ronan, and Gansey wished he would’ve stopped to bring him and Adam. They would’ve helped him stand his ground now.

He looked up at Maura and swallowed. “Neeve has kidnapped Blue.”

Calla stopped shouting at him, but the more concerning sight was Maura, whose fingers clenched around the door.

Calla took one look at her, then turned towards the stairs. “Dean!” she yelled.

“We don’t need a hitman,” Maura said, softly but definite in a way Persephone might have, her eyes never leaving Gansey’s. He watched all the color draining from her face until she was almost as pale as Noah.

“No,” Calla said, all of her initial rage towards Gansey gone, talking to Maura like she would a small child. “But you need moral support.”

Maura shot her a dirty look and beckoned Gansey into the kitchen. He felt numbed when she pressed a cup of tea into his hands, but his brain kept running and screaming for things to do as he recounted the events of the afternoon.

“I should’ve called the police,” he said eventually, and wondered how he hadn’t thought about that first.

“To tell them what?” Dean said as he appeared in the kitchen and sat down next to Maura. “That Maura’s sister has vanished with her niece in a cloud of a smoke?”

“Half-sister,” Maura said weakly, but squeezed his hand.

“But what can we do?” Gansey ran his hands through his hair and sat his elbows on the table. He already hated having to sit there in silence, when he could’ve just taken the Pig to drive around Henrietta and look for Blue. “What does Neeve want to do with her? I mean,” he swallowed, “she won’t do her any harm, will she?”

The thought alone felt like a cold fist closed around his heart. How often had he unintentionally offended Blue? What if she got hurt because of him now, too?

“The problem with Neeve is that she was always pretty much capable of doing anything,” Maura said, still staring into her tea.

“Okay,” Gansey said and nodded. “Okay, I’ll – ”

“Gansey.” Maura reached out and closed her hand over his. He stopped, startled, and met her eyes. He had never even noticed how much alike she and Blue looked before.

“You have to promise me not to do anything rash,” Maura implored.

Gansey wasn’t capable of doing anything but nodding.

Maura squeezed his hand. “And at the moment, this includes looking for my daughter.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna start posting my musical inspiration on [tumblr](pynchie.tumblr.com/tagged/blue-christmas). Come say hi!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Oh what fun to kidnap someone, and also leave no trail." - Is what Neeve is probably singing right now. Blue is probably thinking something along the lines of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqPVz101nd0).
> 
> [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique) is my personal hero for beta'ing all of this and the angst to come.

Everything was dark. **  
**

When Blue tried to open her eyes, a throbbing pain in her left temple started to make itself known and looking into the light that stemmed from the small window at the top of the wall, her vision got blurry.

She sat up as slowly as possible, cradling her head in her hands.

Hazy memories of the night before came back to her as her body started to settle in its new surroundings: Neeve had grabbed her and suddenly she had appeared in the middle of a pentagram in an unfamiliar meadow.

A strangely familiar-looking blonde woman with a sour expression and nails manicured to kill had been waiting for them, gripping Blue’s shoulders as soon as Neeve had let go of her and said, voice dripping of sarcasm even Ronan would flinch at: “Oh, we’ve got a guest! Let me show you the suite we’ve got prepared for you.”

Then she had dragged Blue down a few steps into the basement of what looked like a house in the woods, which contained nothing more than a blanket and the mattress she currently sat on. Well, and a door to the tiniest bathroom Blue had ever seen.

She had turned immediately after the blond woman had left, banging on the door and demanding to be let out, as futile as she knew this attempt to be. To her surprise the lock had actually turned, but when she took a step back, the woman had rammed the door into her face and slammed it shut again, which had left her dazed and soon made her pass out on the mattress.

 _Oh my God_ , Blue thought, the first flutter of real panic in her heart,  _I’ve been kidnapped. I’ve been kidnapped by my own half-aunt!_

But before she could dwell on that thought, the door to the basement opened again and said half-aunt floated in, clasping her hands.

“Blue,” she said, “I could not have foreseen that we should see each other again so soon, but then, the circumstances were rather unpredictable.”

She offered a hand to help her get up that Blue begrudgingly took. Neeve let her eyes skim over her before falling into one of her unsettling stares again.

“No, I can’t say that you’ve grown since I’ve seen you last.”

Blue snorted.

“But your heart has,” Neeve smiled. “I told you, didn’t I?”

Blue crossed her arms and looked at the ground, gathering her strength before narrowing her eyes at Neeve. All the self-defence classes Maura had made her take seemed to be useless facing her.

“What do you want, Neeve? Why am I here?” she managed without a wobble in her voice.

Neeve put an arm around her shoulders and prodded her towards the door. “Now, one after another. Why don’t you come up and have breakfast with me and Piper?”

Piper. That’s why the woman looked so familiar. Blue moved her feet to the exit but tried to escape Neeve’s touch. Neeve let her, which made Blue immediately suspicious. She turned around.

“I have school,” she said and crossed her arms.

“It’s Saturday.” Neeve still hadn’t stopped to smile the knowing smile Blue had already found disturbing when she hadn’t been wondering if Neeve was planning to kill her. Maybe the thing that had possessed her in their backyard had finally taken hold of her. Blue shuddered.

“I want to go home,” she stated, and tried not to sound like a scared five-year-old. She felt like a scared five-year-old.

“Don’t we all?” Neeve gestured for her to lead the way up the stairs. “But here is how it’s going to be, since breakfast is apparently no priority on your to-do-list: We’re going to eat something. And then you’re going to help me summon Cabeswater.”

Blue’s whole body straightened in shock. “What?”

Neeve patted her back again and pushed her up the stairs, until they were seated in the kitchen, a bowl of cereal and a cup of tea already waiting for her. Her stomach betrayed her will not to touch anything that had already been prepared for her with a loud growl, and she started eating the cereal while shooting Neeve murderous glances.

Why did she want to summon Cabeswater? The forest was already fairly accessible from Henrietta, it was more responsive than ever to Ronan and lately, it even let Adam sleep. Did Neeve want to relocate it? Did she want to claim it for herself?

Neeve just smiled back at her and opened the fridge. “Yogurt?”

“No, thanks,” Blue said.

“Are you done then?”

“Yes,” she said, “and I think it would be kind of you to show me the way to the next bus stop, so I can get home.”

She didn’t even know if she had any money on her. But she’d figure something out. She always did.

Neeve patted her hand that was lying on the table. “All in due time,” she said, and led Blue outside.

Blue wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly aware that her coat was still lying on top of her mattress and she was only wearing a thin shirt over three tank tops. She watched Neeve light a big candle and fill red wine in one of the bowls.

Blue inched closer to the door again. She did not like this, and she did not want to be a part of it.

“Now, if you could just stand right behind me, that would be perfect.” Neeve turned to her and Blue shook her head.

“I’m not helping you,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but the last time it included human sacrifice, so whatever it’s going to be this time, I sure won’t be a part of it.”

Neeve’s eyes seemed to search her face for what seemed like an eternity, the creepiness of her stare and the cold making the hairs on Blue’s neck stand up.

Then Neeve sighed again, her equivalent to a shrug, and crouched down at the final corner of the pentagram. “Then just stay there. It will have to suffice.”

She knelt down, folded her fingers in her lap and began murmuring in voice so low Blue couldn’t have understood even if she had stood right next to her.

Her thoughts flicked back to the one time she had found Neeve scrying in their backyard, and how the only thing that had kept her from running was the fear that something might have taken Neeve, and that she didn’t want her to get lost in it.

Now, she was not only sure that Neeve was probably in complete control of the situation, she was also sure that if something happened, she would not hesitate to run.

The huge candle began to flicker. It had been so easy to put it out the last time. Maybe if she –

Before Blue could think that thought to an end, she felt a surge go through her, like wind but more solid, and how it gripped the energy she held close to her heart and pulled. It was like all the ghosts from St. Mark’s Eve chose to walk through her at once, just that the experience of feeling drained seemed to kick in immediately.

She called upon the glass bubble again, imagined it caked with ice and so cold it would freeze this energy.  _I am white light_ , she told herself,  _I am in charge of my power and Neeve can’t touch me_. She closed her eyes and pulled the plug on her battery.

Neeve’s eyes snapped open. Blue had to sit down on the front door step, already feeling exhausted and shivering, but she kept her shield up. Neeve murmured something and unfolded her hands. The flame of the candle returned back to normal, and the breeze that had swept through the winds around them ebbed out. Blue hadn’t even noticed the deafening rustle.

“Oh,” Neeve finally said and sat down next to her. “Your defenses have improved. Did Maura come up with something new?”

“No,” Blue panted, and thought back on the times she had to fight of Noah. “Sometimes it really is about practice.”

She bared her teeth at Neeve.

“Hm,” Neeve said. “Pity, really. Do you know how long you can keep it up?”

Blue grunted. She had no idea, but she would never let her know.

Neeve let her hands fall down on her knees. “I don’t have time for this,” she exhaled noisily and got up to the kitchen. A moment later, she sat next to Blue again, who had let her shield down for a only a minute, trying to relax her energy. She held something in her hands.

“What are you doing?” Blue asked and tried to shimmy away, but the step came to an end.

“I’ll have to drug you,” Neeve said with a sad smile, but her grip on Blue’s jaw was firm when she yanked it open and forced a tiny white pill through her teeth.

“No!” Blue wanted to spit it out, would’ve put her fingers down her throat if necessary, but Neeve held her mouth shut with an inhuman strength Blue had not thought her capable of. She struggled under her grip, tried to force her mouth open or bite Neeve if necessary,  but the pill had already touched her tongue and Blue could feel her thoughts slowing down.

Gansey had told her, once, that when doctors anesthetize you for surgery, they still make small talk with you until you suddenly wake up in your hospital room again and a lot of time has passed.

This pill was nothing like that. Blue could feel herself slipping, the grip of Neeve’s fingers boring into her cheek, and her sad smile towering over her like a cloud of self-indulgent pity.

She tried to blink, but then it was impossible to open her eyes again.

* * *

Whenever Ronan fell asleep at Monmouth, he tried not to end up in Cabeswater if he could help it.

At the Barns, surrounded by dream things he wanted to wake, it was a different matter, but at Monmouth he let sleep overtake him without wanting to take something from it.

No need to put Gansey in danger.

But when he fell asleep watching the first snow falling outside of his window, he ended up on a shadowy meadow in a wood that looked like Cabeswater – and yet wasn’t. The trees didn’t speak, the colors were drained and he couldn’t hear a thing.

A few feet away lay a small creature with spiky black hair on the ground. Ronan suppressed a shiver. What was this?

He walked towards the girl as recognition started to kick in with a pinch of dread. Something was not right about her being here.

“Blue?” he asked.

She looked up slowly at the sound of her name, holding her head as if she was fighting off a headache. “Ronan?”

Her gaze was slightly unfocused and he wondered whether he was dreaming about Blue – it wasn’t common, but it had happened – or if she was in his dream, like Adam sometimes whenever he built a connection to Cabeswater. She certainly did not look how he would normally picture her.

The girl in front of him had a bruise on her face that reminded him strangely of Noah and made his blood run cold.

“Can I ask you something?” he said, and waited until she managed to look at him.

“Sure, go ahead.” Her voice seemed to come from somewhere far away.

“Am I dreaming about you or are you, well, here somehow?”

Blue was clutching her head a little more tightly, but squinted up at Ronan in a familiar, disapproving fashion. Way better. “Am I talking in Latin?”

Ronan shook his head.

“Then I guess it’s just me, accidentally hanging out in your dream. God knows I didn’t mean to.”

Ronan smiled, glad to see her face clearing up and the old snappiness coming back. Even though it was at his expense, as per usual.

“That’s strange, though,” he said, and plopped down on the patch of grass next to her. “I mean – I dream about people, and sometimes people appear in my dreams.”

He thought about Adam and Kavinsky. “But they’re usually somewhat tied to Cabeswater.” He had been careful not to say  _supernaturally skilled_. It was a moot point and he didn’t feel the need to rub it in when Blue was passed out God knows where just to appear in his dream.

He had wondered often enough if Gansey was only keeping him around as a collectable after he had discovered he was a Greywaren, interest lost in what he considered his personality.

It hurt.

Blue nodded miserably and plucked out a fistful of grass. The soft ripping sound ended the silence that had lain over them like a blanket and Ronan felt himself draw in a breath in relief as the trees began to rustle in familiar sounds.

“I think I am, now,” she said and looked down on her lap.

“What do you mean?” He furrowed his brows.

“I don’t know what Neeve did to me,” she turned to him, “but I can’t escape, and you guys need to be very careful, I’m sure she has a pla – ”

A gush of wind threw Blue’s hair into her face, and the whisper of the trees rang with a sudden shout through Ronan. He had definitely heard the sound “ _Eheu_ ” coming somewhere from his left.

He began to realize that it was Cabeswater after all, it just felt like someone had plucked the sound cable from its speakers before.

When he turned back to Blue, she was gone and Henrietta sat in her place, smiling her knowing smile up at him.

“Fuck,” he cursed and jumped to his feet. “Way to go man, am I going crazy?”

But Henrietta just sat there and shook her head at him, a motion that almost looked like pity and reminded him of the small blonde girl that usually accompanied him on his trips to dream something up.

“I knew I had seen you before!” He made a gesture with his hand and backed away from her. There was something deeply wrong about her appearing in his dream and taking Blue away.

“Are you Orphan Girl?  _Orba es?_ ”

He had never regretted not having asked – or even named – Orphan Girl before. Her appearance could change – but “Orphan Girl” was probably not an identifier she went by.

At first Ronan thought Henrietta might not dignify him with an answer and would just continue smiling eerily at him and his uncharacteristically cowardly behavior towards her, but then she whispered something in Latin that was both an answer and not an answer at all.

“I am Cabeswater’s most loyal servant, you have always known that.”

But you are not, Ronan thought as he dared to turn his back to her and run from the scene, run from this dream. All of a sudden dirt-blond hair and freckles like unknown constellations spread across jutting shoulder blades dancing in front of him, overshadowing the hungry look in her dark eyes.

_You are not Adam._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So who do we hate more, Neeve for what she's doing to Blue or Henrietta for messing with Ronan's head? [Let me know](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask)!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy St Nick (if you're from a country that likes sticking candy down their shoes)!  
> As this mini-holiday is my favourite, I'm focusing entirely on my favourite at first ;)
> 
> [alchemistique](www.archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique) is also my favourite for beta'ing.

Adam woke with a start. His eyelids snapped open, and his head turned towards his alarm clock, as if he was unsure what to make of it.

Ronan had told him about sleep paralysis once, and he had seen him a few times, how he was unable to move seconds even after he had woken up. Adam had always found the sight terrifying.

It was even worse to experience it himself. Or that’s what he thought.

After a beat, he watched his arm reaching out and prodding at the alarm clock until it stopped ringing. Then he sat up and went into the bathroom to wash his face, but none of these decisions to move had been consciously made by Adam.

He could see his face in the mirror through his eyes, and he knew it had to be his, but if he hadn’t known he was still in his body, he wouldn’t have recognized it. Adam tried not to panic.

His face contorted into a robotic smile. Adam could feel that his face was doing it – but it was almost like some outer force was pulling at his skin, so foreign it was.

_Hello, Adam_ , a voice in his head said, and Adam would’ve turned around had he been able to. He knew that voice. But no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t put a face to it.

It almost felt like that voice had always been in his head.

The voice smiled at his attempt to name it.  _How could a voice smile?_

Adam’s body went about his morning, made his bed and dressed in his school uniform, until it struggled with the tie.

_How do I tie this knot?_  The voice in Adam’s head asked, and Adam felt like it had replaced a huge part of his consciousness. The voice was not only in his head. It had taken complete control over his body.

Adam didn’t know what to do with this information, but even if he tried to communicate with the voice, he couldn’t speak.

_Just consciously think it. It’s like scrying_ , the voice supplied.

_Persephone?_  Adam tried, warmth tugging at his heart. If Persephone’s spirit had chosen to roam the earth, he felt strangely honored to have been chosen as a vessel for possession.

The voice chuckled.  _No, it’s me._  Adam’s vision was flooded with hazy imagery of vines crawling up buildings, trees gently rocking in the wind and whispering in Latin. A river rushed through both of his ears and the air lost the dusty smell of Adam’s apartment and filled his nose with moss and earth.

His senses were still his own. But he had already been sharing all of them for about half a year.  _Cabeswater_ , Adam thought, his vision flickering back to his own face in the mirror and its otherworldly stare.

His head gave a miniscule nod and directed his gaze back to the problem at hand.  _How do I teach a magical forest how to tie a tie?_

Adam was at a loss for words.  _Or you can show me,_  Cabeswater said, and Adam could feel it retracting from his fingers, up his arms and out from the forefront of his minds to just about above his belly button, momentarily leaving a feeling like pins and needles all over him.

Adam blinked at himself a few times before letting his hands act on their own in tying his tie. What a strange sensation it was to only be able to move his arms and have no feeling at all in his legs.

And yet he had never felt so balanced.

As soon as he had adjusted the knot, he could feel Cabeswater creeping back up his veins, occupying his arms and pushing Adam, the part of him that made him act like him, back a little further.

Then it took Adam’s school bag and made its way to the point where Gansey usually picked him up for school.

As Adam’s body waited for Gansey to arrive, back straight, eyes ahead, Adam began to wonder what was happening.  _Cabeswater,_  he tried,  _has something happened? Did I do something wrong? Do you need to correct something on the ley line yourself using my body?_

He had promised to be Cabeswater’s hands and eyes. It only made sense that Cabeswater would come to use them firsthand.

But Adam could only make out the shaking of a head somewhere in his subconscious as Gansey pulled up and opened the door for him, expression strained.

“Morning, Adam,” he said, his eyes only glancing over him and turning back to the road. Adam had been sure Gansey would notice something, but then he remembered the news from the day before. Gansey had to witness Blue being kidnapped by her own aunt.

Adam wanted to ask how he was and what he wanted to do next, but Cabeswater didn’t let him.

Cabeswater also refused to let up when they walked to class and kept Adam’s gaze stoically ahead when Ronan joined them.

“What’s this, posing for the prospectus of depressed boarding school teenagers?” he said as his eyes wandered once from Gansey to Adam.

Gansey merely sighed as he slid onto his desk, and Adam had no choice but to ignore him as Cabeswater did the same with his body.

Ronan seemed confused for a moment. “Okay, whatever, man,” he said and took his usual place next to Adam.

The whole inconvenience of being possessed by a supernatural force that was not versed in human social structures began to dawn on Adam. What would he do? Ignore his friends until Cabeswater decided it had enough?

As Cabeswater kept staring at the blackboard throughout most of the first lesson, Ronan kept shooting Adam strange looks as to why he wasn’t taking notes. Adam began to feel trapped in his body. He wanted to claw at the part that was Cabeswater in his head and get him out, push him back down so he was himself again, but Cabeswater remained unresponsive.

It was frustrating. Adam drew back in on himself and tried to make a plan on how to get rid of Cabeswater without angering it, but was interrupted when Cabeswater suddenly propelled him upfront to his consciousness and left him in charge of his upper body once again.

Confused, Adam looked up just in time to see his math teacher turning to him.

“Anyone who can tell me the first derivation of ex? Mr. Parrish?” he asked and settled his gaze on Adam.

Of course a supernatural forest couldn’t do advanced trigonometry. Or it simply couldn’t speak. “It stays ex throughout all derivations, sir.”

“Correct, Mr. Parrish,” his teacher said, but before Adam could let even a hint of a smile onto his face, Cabeswater took charge of him again.

* * *

Ronan passed Gansey on his way out of Monmouth, but to Gansey’s question of where he was going, he had only replied: “Tennis practice,” a sarcastic omission that Gansey knew was the closest Ronan would ever get to lying.

So there he was, pacing the streets of mini Henrietta alone and looking for something to do. It was not that he couldn’t have done his homework, it was just that all the concentration he might have needed to apply to it completely failed him when he tried.

He couldn’t see Noah sitting on the billiard table watching him with sad eyes.

His thoughts kept drifting towards Blue, and how tiny she had looked in the middle of the pentagram, her nose stubbly red from the cold and her eyes wide in surprise at seeing her aunt. He supposed that the fact that she didn’t purposefully leave him would’ve made him feel better – if he had any idea how and where she was now.

And he had promised himself not to play favorites – but how could he not when she was in possible mortal danger?

A knock on the door pulled him from his thoughts.

It was Henrietta standing in the hallway, looking slightly out of breath. “Hi,” she said, “are you alright?” and her voice took a slight loop at the last word. Gansey didn’t know whether to find it endearing or annoying.

“Kind of,” he said and opened the door wider, but she didn’t come in.

“Gansey, I know you told me that you aren’t supposed to go looking for Blue, but you seemed so uncollected yesterday that I really think we should, if no one else will,” Henrietta said, her voice pleading like it was more important to her than Gansey.

He leaned against the door to keep himself from shrugging haplessly. “I wouldn’t know where to start,” he admitted. Why did it bother him so much to admit insufficiencies to Henrietta?

A smile that reminded him strangely of Declan stole over her face. “But I might,” she said. “Come on, I’ve got to show you something.” She turned around and expected him to follow her down the stairs to the parking lot.

What was it about this girl? Mechanically, he started after her, when his phone beeped with a text from his pocket.

_r u home? need 2 talk_

From Ronan.

Gansey stopped on the stairs and furrowed his brows. It was the first text he had received from Ronan ever since Kavinsky had gotten hold of his phone, and the uneasy feeling in his gut was just the same. At least this time he couldn’t have had smashed the Pig.

Henrietta smiled up at him from a lower flight of stairs. “Everything alright up there?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Gansey replied, and continued walking.

_Just heading out with Henrietta,_  he texted back.  _Is tonight okay?_  But Ronan never replied.

Out in the parking lot, Henrietta waited for him in front of the Pig, and something about her posture of covered defensiveness reminded him of Helen again.

She put her hair back over one shoulder. “Listen, Gansey, I know that I’ve entered your friend group as a bit of an intruder, but I think I can fix this.”

She gave him a tiny smile that didn’t show any of her teeth and Gansey just nodded.

“Because to anyone else this might sound crazy, but after what you’ve told me about Adam and Ronan, I know you’re going to believe me,” she went on, “when I say that I can do magic.”

Gansey stared at her for a second before he began blinking slowly. Something inside of him told him that he had known, that it had been clear to him the moment she appeared next to his table in the library, because wondrous things just had a way of finding him, just as all of his friends had turned out to be curious creatures full of enticing possibilities. But there was also unpleasant doubt in the form of the memory of how Blue’s face had twisted when Henrietta first called him.

“Show me,” he said, and took a step back.

Henrietta made a fist with her hand and held it up to her mouth. Then she opened it finger by finger, to reveal a tiny bee sitting on the inside of her palm, alive and buzzing, although it was the beginning of winter.

She looked up at Gansey with her dark eyes and pursed her lips to blow the bee at him.

Gansey’s heart accelerated. There was an EpiPen right in the Pig, but Henrietta was blocking the door. Did she know he was allergic? Did she do it on purpose? But he hadn’t told her. He had to tell her. A thin coat of sweat was forming on his upper lip even though the temperatures were dropping, as his vision narrowed down to the bee flying directly towards his neck. He could be dead in seconds.

Henrietta reached out, caught the bee effortlessly and handed Gansey a lily.

She laughed when he let out a shuddering breath. His hands were shaking, so he put them into his pockets to collect himself instead of reaching for the flower.

“Look at you, getting all worked up over a bit of conjuring,” Henrietta said, and put the lily behind Gansey’s ear. It was a strangely intimate gesture, and her touch made Gansey flinch inwardly.

Was that how Adam felt all the time? Liking people but being terrified they could turn against you?

Henrietta clapped his shoulder, walked around to the Pig and opened the door.

“Come on,” she said, and winked at him, “we’re going to look for your girlfriend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm [pynchie](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask) on tumblr - come say hi!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just love Blue and Noah.
> 
> (And [my beta](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique), which I'm going to mention every chapter, because betas are seriously underappreciated.)

The headache was worse this time. **  
**

Blue kept her eyes shut against the dim light that was coming from the window and put her pillow over her head.

Her body felt jittery and she tried to breathe slowly, but she could only suck in air in desperate gasps, trying to still her beating heart.

She remembered seeing people at Kavinsky’s party that were dancing and laughing at nothing, happy with themselves for once. And then there were the ones crawling in the shadows with weak knees, eyes hollowed out in shaky despair, as if reaching for someone to get them out of their body.

This was how she felt then.

She made an effort to sit up and not be sick on her mattress. There was light coming out from under the door, and hushed but agitated voices talking.

It would have been an appropriate time to curse at Neeve if someone had been there to hear it. She inched closer to the door and leaned back against it.

“Why is this happening to me?” Someone wailed.  _Neeve_. “I wanted Cabeswater in its own human form, so that together with Henrietta, they could reveal Glendower to me.”

Blue remembered the dream she had – although it had probably really been Ronan’s – and how she had simultaneously been annoyed at him and felt the urge to warn him. Because Neeve did have a plan. And this was it. And knowing Neeve, she would stop at nothing to get it done.

“But I thought you had successfully summoned Cabeswater,” an annoyed voice drifted to Blue, the one she still sometimes had nightmares about in combination with a gun pointed to her head.

“No, I have not,” Neeve replied. “I told you I have summoned him, but because Blue was so uncooperative, I could not create its own body, so that it’s now trapped in one of Blue’s little friends.”

A chill ran down Blue’s spine. Cabeswater was trapped in one of her boys. Would it be Ronan? Was that why Blue had entered his dream? Had she accidentally turned Ronan inside out so that it was now Cabeswater who had access to him and not the other way around?

“So?” Piper sounded decidedly unimpressed.

“So?” Neeve’s voice was now so loud that Blue didn’t have to strain herself to listen anymore. “So I can’t unify him with Henrietta, because for that he would have to be here, and he would have to come on his own terms. But I can’t send a message to Cabeswater without revealing myself or our location, and the boy would only have to fight Cabeswater’s presence for a second to regain control over his body and leave a note so the other spoilt children could come running. It’s too risky.”

Blue exhaled through her nose, unaware she had been holding her breath. There was hope.

“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you, Piper?” Neeve sighed. “These kids have instant access to Cabeswater through the Greywaren. They just haven’t figured out how to truly use it to their advantage yet. I can go there, but I can’t communicate with it like they can. Henrietta can, but only in a dreamsphere she can’t take me to. So I need both in their embodied form.”

There was another sound of exasperation.

“Why am I even telling you this?”

Blue let her head slump against the door again and closed her eyes. So Neeve was after Glendower as well. Glendower was in the space between Henrietta and Cabeswater. And she wanted both in their embodied form like –

Her eyes flipped open upon realization. Like Henrietta! She was not a girl who had showed up to help Gansey with his research – she was an embodiment of their town, and probably sent by Neeve to distract them from their search.

Blue’s breathing quickened again.

“Are you okay?” The voice to her right startled her, and she would have screamed had it not been so familiar.

“Noah!” she said, and flung herself against him, arms around his shoulders. Noah petted her hair.

She was so glad to see him that she had to fight back tears.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” She tried to sound composed, but could tell it wasn’t working. “How are the others? What happened?”

Noah gave her a sad look and hugged her tighter.

“Everybody’s worried about you. They know Neeve took you, but they don’t know where. Gansey is looking for you.” He smiled at her like that was supposed to cheer her up, but it only made her heart ache.

“Ronan wants to tell him he saw you in his dream, but he refuses to talk to Gansey when Henrietta is around. And Adam, well, Adam doesn’t need to scry anymore to communicate with Cabeswater.”

“So it’s Adam,” Blue whispered. “And Henrietta is just there to, to…estrange them?” She felt miserable. “But what does Neeve even mean, she wants to unify Henrietta and Cabeswater? How is this going to help her find Glendower?”

Noah let go of her and started drawing in the dust on the ground. “Well, math was never my strong point, but I think it’s like a Venn diagram. There’s a place that’s Cabeswater and there’s a place that’s Henrietta” – he drew two overlapping circles on the ground – “and they’re linked through the ley line.”

He connected their intersections to a straight line. “And on there is Glendower. So if Neeve has both Cabeswater and Henrietta, they can show her where he is.”

Blue nodded. She was beginning to feel like herself again, the drug burning out of her system overshadowed by a sudden rage against Neeve that filled her heart. Of course she wouldn’t back up from a challenge like finding Glendower. Of course she had to get mixed up in Blue’s life.

“Noah,” she said, “you have to tell them. I know they don’t listen sometimes, but you have to sit them down and tell them all this, tell them Adam’s possessed but that he might be the solution, tell them they can’t trust Henrietta and tell them they should stay away from the ley line for a while!”

Noah’s sad smile was all she didn’t want to hear. He helped her up and led her over to her small window.

“Do you see that candle?” he asked, pointing at the candle Blue had wanted to knock over right when the ritual began.

“Neeve placed it directly on the ley line. It takes all its power. And leaves too little for me when you’re not around.”

Blue swallowed and leaned into him. “Please, Noah,” she whispered. “I know it’s hard sometimes, but you have to try.”

She was almost convinced that it was his courage that failed him once again. The situation was too troubled, and Noah hated to get involved.

He put his arm around her shoulder. “I’ll try,” he whispered back.

Blue nestled her hand out between them. “Pinky promise.”

Noah smiled a little brighter and linked their fingers. “Pinky promise.”

* * *

Ronan had been leaning against Gansey’s desk with his arms crossed for about an hour when said roommate decided to show up.

It was a strange scenario, Ronan thought, because of how often their roles had been reversed, but he had to talk to Gansey without his newly acquired English sidekick. The last thing he needed was Gansey and another air-headed girlfriend.

He wore his angry smile like armor when Gansey opened the door and he and Henrietta milled in, both laughing at something Ronan was sure no one else could find funny.

“Out,” he barked. Both of them stopped laughing and looked at him, their faces fallen and good spirits beginning to skip away.

“Ronan?” Gansey said after he had cleared his throat. “I live here.”

“Not you,” Ronan made a motion with his head, “her.”

Henrietta slid her gaze from him to Gansey and back, but Gansey’s clouding expression was set on Ronan.

“Do you need it spelled out?” Ronan raised his chin. “Get. Out. Of. Here.”

“Alright, then,” Henrietta said with an irritated smile. “See you later, Gansey.”

She slid her coat and bag on in one motion and slithered out of the door. It fell into its lock after her with a loud clunk.

Ronan and Gansey regarded each other with a long stare before either of them said a word, cereal box Henrietta still separating them on the floor.

“What is this, Ronan?” Gansey finally said. “What is your problem now?”

“Your new flame,” Ronan said and flicked his tongue across his teeth.

Gansey narrowed his eyes. “I am sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m going to pretend that I do.”

Ronan scoffed and looked at the floor before shaking his head at Gansey again. “You know my views on this.”

“Ronan, you don’t understand.” Gansey finally looked a bit harassed. “Henrietta might be the last missing piece we needed in our search. She’s going to help me find Blue and then I’ll find Glendower in no time.”

Ronan narrowed his eyes and began to wonder what had happened to Gansey lately. He slipped into first person more often than he liked, but he never forgot to correct himself.

“Well, I’m sorry that I don’t trust people I pick up on the street with immediate effect like you do, but let’s ‘pretend that I do,’” he said. “How exactly would someone who has moved here a week ago help you find Blue?”

Gansey sighed and ran his thumb over his lower lip as if he wasn’t sure how to tell Ronan what he was about to say. Then he met his eyes again, and to Ronan’s surprise, there was a spark to them that was usually reserved for Glendower related topics.

“She has magic, Ronan,” he stated calmly.

Ronan knew Gansey’s fascination with everything supernatural and scientifically unexplainable even if he didn’t share it, but he couldn’t help himself and laughed at Gansey’s pathos.

“Yeah?” he said. “As, I’m sure it hasn’t slipped your notice, everybody fucking else you know does?”

“It’s different,” Gansey said, but Ronan didn’t feel like letting him explain himself.

“Sorry we’re not good enough for you anymore, that you need to expand your everlasting collection of absurdity without paying attention to the friends you already have!” he said louder than intended, fists clenching at his sides.

Gansey was back to looking angry again, something Ronan had grown too accustomed to not to revel in it.

“Now you’re being unfair,” he said and crossed his arms.

“You haven’t even noticed how strange Adam’s been these last few days,” Ronan retorted.

“Adam’s always strange,” Gansey groaned. “Sometimes he looks like he’s not him, sometimes he is too much of himself again. But when was the last time Adam hadn’t had Cabeswater under control? Maybe he’s just worried about exams, like everyone else.”

Ronan let the last remark slide as his frustration began to build up like a wall inside himself.

“It’s not like that,” he said, “he has – he wouldn’t – ”

Ronan stumbling over his words seemed to have a strangely calming effect on Gansey. He inhaled deeply and nodded as if giving Ronan permission to continue. Ronan’s nostrils flared.

“I bought him food yesterday,” Ronan said, “and when I brought it to his apartment, he just looked at me, said ‘thanks,’ took the food and closed the door in my face.”

Gansey looked confused but did not seem to find anything wrong with the story. “So maybe he’s learning to accept small gestures of kindness, even if it’s just from you. That’s…good on him?”

The urge to punch something grew steadily at the  _even if it’s just from you._ What was that supposed to mean?

“He closed the door in my face,” Ronan said, wanting to scream at Gansey, shout at him, make him see how wrong this was, but at the same time, he realized he could never make him understand just what it meant. “And he never – I mean. Fuck. He always asks me to do homework with him or…or something. Adam is not even himself anymore.”

It was something Ronan knew in his heart to be true but found incredibly hard to communicate.  _The worst thing had been his eyes. They looked like they were begging me to stay._ Adam had never looked at him just like that before.

Gansey’s expression was still skeptical, but the fight was draining from his body, and Ronan could see uncharacteristic signs of exhaustion coming in. He slumped on his bed.

“What do you want me to do, Ronan?”

And he didn’t know. He wanted Gansey to care, and he wanted him to do the right thing – something Ronan knew he was capable of but always seemed to get wrong anyway.

So he just made a frustrated noise and stalked into his room, slamming his door.

Neither of them had noticed Noah sitting on the billiard table, worrying his lip the entire time and screaming, airlessly, soundlessly, for them to stop and listen to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suggest you listen to "The Kids Are Alright" by Fall Out Boy and think of the beauty of Ronan's & Gansey's friendship. (There is a mini-chance of crying.)
> 
> Tell me what you think here or on [tumblr](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask)!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adam Parrish will always give me life. (Thanks to [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique), my beta, as always, forever.)

At night, Adam lay awake in his bed and stared at the ceiling above his mattress.

He had gone to bed with a weary body too often, his bones aching and his muscles giving out so that the only thing he had to bring to rest was his mind. But lying there, he could barely feel his body.

The only thing he was aware of and that still kept him awake was Cabeswater.

The occurrence was not new to him, but he grew more frustrated by the second. He could feel his consciousness slipping, even when he was awake these days.

The only moments he was kicked awake were when Cabeswater let him answer questions in class to not blow its cover, but it took interaction with his friends completely up to itself.

Persephone had once told him “Cabeswater is not the boss of you,” and he would not dishonor the first real mentor he had had in his life by letting the forest take over his life completely.

 _Cabeswater_ , he hissed in his head,  _why are you here? Why are you using me like this? I agreed to be your hands and eyes, not your whole body and mouth_.

There was silence for a moment.

 _Magus,_  Cabeswater’s voice answered, I _am overstepping boundaries, I know. I am not acting on my own wishes, however. Someone has summoned me, someone who has not yet revealed their identity to me. I do not know why, but I can feel their energy._

Adam considered this. So Cabeswater did not want to claim him completely? But then why didn’t it let him take charge of his life until that person showed up?

 _I cannot_ , Cabeswater sighed.  _They are draining my power, it is evaporating into the air through a candle, they are feeding off it._

 _Like in a ritual?_  Adam asked.

 _I do not know,_  Cabeswater said.  _But to sustain myself, I need to utilize every source of energy available._

Adam felt like alarm bells were going off in his head.  _So you’re feeding on my life source?_  he asked.

But Cabeswater didn’t answer. A warm breeze blew over Adam’s face and Cabeswater closed his eyes for him.

 _Shh_. The sound mixed in Adam’s ears with the faint and soothing rustle of trees, and the sensation of grass growing under and over him to cover and secure him with its weight.

He felt his consciousness being dragged down by Cabeswater as he still tried to process what it had just told him, and after a few minutes, he gave into his exhaustion and fell asleep.

In the middle of the night, his room at its very darkest with shadows long and sharp, Adam woke again. He had dreamed of Ronan’s hurt expression when he had closed the door in his face, and how his body had completely ignored the “The fuck, Parrish?” that had followed, the next bang on the door that had shaken it to its hinges, until it had subdued to a soft knock and an almost whispered “Adam?”

The sensation of his chest growing heavier even though he couldn’t feel his chest was still alive in Adam’s head and he swallowed. He wasn’t sure if Ronan had ever called him Adam before.

Maybe it just struck him so hard because “Adam” was barely there at the moment.

He shook his head and sat up on his mattress. Then he looked at his knees in shock.

How was he able to do that? Was Cabeswater gone?

He walked into the bathroom to look at himself in the mirror – it was clearly him, but when he closed his eyes, it was still like he could feel a second breath, a second beating heart in his chest and a slow hum in both of his ears.

Cabeswater was asleep. Adam’s body now held two contained two conscious beings, who could be asleep and awake at the same time, but when one slept and the other woke up, it was in sole charge apparently. Adam wondered how that was possible, and if he could burst if it got too full inside of him.

Shaking his head with a smile on his face, he opened the tab and poured himself a glass of water. The icy sensation of the liquid sliding down his throat was still his own, but the cold must’ve shocked Cabeswater awake.

When the water reached his stomach, he felt Cabeswater waking up from the middle of his chest and watched his face transform into the same cool and distant mask that had been staring at him for the past days.

 _Go back to sleep_ , Cabeswater said, and walked Adam back to his bed and laid him down.

It was like every time it came back the harder it was for Adam to fight it, and that if he didn’t cling on to the part that was him, he would vanish altogether.

His arms would rank into twigs, his rage into thorns, his frustration into bark, his mind into moss. But his heart was beating, blood and alive next to Cabeswater, veins and arteries connecting the forest and this last thing that was still him.

And it was his heart that began to form a plan.

It required only two things: exhaustion and patience. Just like sleep.

* * *

Gansey came home to Monmouth after school the next day to find it empty, a state he had expected but dreaded. Sometimes, he liked being alone, but more often than not he craved being surrounded by people he liked and could relate to. It made him feel like he stood out less than he knew he had to.

He knocked on Ronan’s door once, but even if he was there he wouldn’t answer. Ronan’s way of coping involved a lot of avoiding people after conflicts, although never the conflict itself. Gansey sighed and rested his head against the door.

He had meant to apologize to him. He had also meant to ask Adam what was wrong after noticing his standoffishness, but he hadn’t done his homework for two weeks and he couldn’t fall asleep, because he held his phone too tight, waiting for a call from Blue that never came.

He felt like there was so much going on in his head, his lifetime couldn’t possibly suffice to hold it all.

There was a ruptured knock on the door. “Noah?” Gansey asked, hoping he’d show.

“Who’s Noah?” Henrietta’s voice was muffled by the door. “It’s just me.”

Gansey shook himself and plastered a weak smile over his face. Henrietta did nothing but confuse him. She was nice and interesting and yet no one seemed to like her, she had told him a lot about herself but he didn’t think he knew her at all.

And yet she was the only friend there for him then. He opened the door for her.

“Hi,” she said, and flicked away a strand of hair that had gotten stuck to her lip gloss. “I was just – well, I know you’re probably off looking for Glendower with the lads soon, but I thought I’d stop by and ask anyway: Do you want to come to the local Christmas fair?”

He stared at her bright face and reddened cheeks. He hadn’t even known there was a Christmas fair in Henrietta. He had always wanted to take Blue to a Christmas fair, buy her roasted chestnuts and watch her delighted laugh on a chairoplane; he’d even take her to an original Christmas fair in Germany, but who knew how likely that was?

“Sure,” he said after a second of hesitation and grabbed his scarf. Henrietta was his best shot at making sense of the mess in his head.

“Brill,” she lilted and linked his arm with hers to drag him out of the door.

She pressed slightly into his side so that a wave of her perfume washed over him, like she was trying to cover a dark wooden smell with something sickly sweet. He associated this smell with his first English teacher.

But then Henrietta nudged his side and smiled up at him, and he decided to ignore the feeling in his gut.

The Christmas fair was bigger than Gansey had expected, the early evening hours attracting families as well as teenagers despite the fact that it was the middle of the week. He exchanged nods with a few of his classmates he passed by, all of whom made appreciative faces at Henrietta that Gansey was mildly disgusted by.

Of course everyone would think he had come here to show her off. The thought made his insides curl.  _If she was Blue_ , he thought,  _she would’ve started a fight with about three guys already_. He wasn’t sure if that thought was more worrying or exciting to him.

“Oh look, a Ferris wheel!” Henrietta said and pointed at the huge construct in front of them.

“Do you want to go?” Gansey asked as she was already dragging him towards it.

Henrietta sometimes made him feel strangely at a loss for words, or like anything he could say would sound stupid. Blue never made him feel this way.

“Which Ferris wheel do you think is the biggest in the world?” Henrietta asked when they were on top of the wheel, overlooking the whole town. The lights had melted together to bright splotches, and if Gansey took his glasses off and squinted a little, he could pretend he was flying over a carpet of nothing but light.

“I’m taking a wild guess and going with the London Eye,” he said and smiled at her.

“Wrong,” she said and bopped his nose. “There are at least three more in China alone that are bigger.”

It was an affectionate gesture that Gansey hadn’t expected and made him furrow his brows. He had the strange urge to impress Henrietta. It seemed impossible.

“So which is it then?” he asked as they climbed off their seats again.

“It’s pretty boring actually,” Henrietta and now linked their hands instead of their arms. “It’s called The High Roller, in Las Vegas. The Great Berlin Wheel was supposed to be bigger, but the Germans gave up on that one a few years ago.”

She looked at the ground and smiled, as if she knew full well that such trivial knowledge appeared strange to most people, but hoped that Gansey could appreciate it. He felt bad for her, and grateful at the same time that he was never in his life made to feel like whatever he had to say was too much for someone.

“Speaking of Germans,” he said, “they have this popular little Christmas cake that looks nothing like a tree, but they still call it ‘tree cake.’”

She looked up again. “Yeah, I know! They are pretty delicious, though,” she said.

“You’ve been to Germany?” Gansey didn’t know why he was so disappointed that she already knew what he had told her about.

“Gansey,” Henrietta stopped walking, “I grew up in Europe. Of course I’ve been to Germany, they practically run the place!” She threw her head back and laughed, but Gansey couldn’t join in.

It felt like he was competing with her in a pop quiz, and that he had tried to make her feel better for no reason at all – she had never felt bad. It was him who behaved awkwardly.

“Oh,” he just said. She laughed a little more at the face he made. He noticed how pretty Henrietta really was, an easy sort of prettiness not every girl possessed.

But her laugh made him frown ever so slightly that she barely could’ve noticed – it reminded him of something dark and deeply unsettling, but he couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

“You’re adorable when you look like that, Gansey, you know that?” Henrietta said as she caught her breath and put a hand on his shoulder to steady herself.

“I –I – ” How had she managed to get him flustered? “No one has ever called me adorable before,” he said to appear more nonchalant than he felt.

“Well, they should,” she whispered and leaned into him, her body pressing close and molding itself against him as her lips sucked gently at his lower lip.

Gansey froze.

“Oh no.”

He didn’t know who had actually said it when she stepped back and looked up at him, but that was the moment his brain decided to catch up with him and supply him with the information that going here with her had been a horrible mistake, that it felt wrong and should never have happened, and that the smartest decision would be to turn around and run away.

So that’s what he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow is going to make up for it.  
> (Rage rants on here or on [tumblr](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask) highly encouraged.)


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want a cup of psychic tea.
> 
> Thanks for dealing with this, [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique)!

“Blue?”

Neeve had gotten her out of the basement and sat her on the couch with a cup of tea. Which, Blue loathed to admit, did taste better than anything Maura had ever produced.

“Blue, I would like to apologize,” Neeve began and joined her on the couch. “I got impatient the last time and I know that cooperation and consent in rituals apart from sacrifices are vital. I should not have forced you. I’m sorry.”

Blue just glowered at her. She was glad Neeve apologized, but she would not forgive her. She felt like she needed to hold her rage in her heart if she wanted to stand a chance to get away.

“And I know that I am keeping you from home,” Neeve went on, “which was also not really my intention.”

Blue scoffed and sipped her tea, pretending to ignore her.

“But if I let you go, you take all that power you hold with you, and maybe even more, because you’ve been nursing from the ley line. So I have decided that I will bring you back home, but only after I have transferred your powers as an amplifier to Piper and then maybe altered your memory a little bit. Alright?”

Blue spat out her tea. “What?”

“An amplifier?” Piper interrupted them from the kitchen. “That’s about the least glamorous thing I have ever heard. I have powers of my own, Neeve, it’s not like I’m going to be a psychic battery in a house full of lunatics like the midget over there.”

Blue was glad she had no tea in her mouth anymore so she could swallow an answer to that instead.

“Don’t listen to Piper,” Neeve said. “I mean, it’s not like your power has been very useful to you personally.”

Blue didn’t know what ridding her of her powers required, maybe it was painful, maybe it wasn’t, but they seemed to belong to her just like her arm did, and she would notice if someone cut off her arm.

Living without her powers, however less beneficial they were for her, didn’t seem like something she could do. What about Noah? What about Calla and Maura and their special Christmas readings?

She had missed most of them already.

She eyed Neeve suspiciously. “What do you mean by ‘altering my memories’?”

“It’s like taking an eraser and clearing out certain details. So you’ll remember I took you, and how long you’ve been gone, but you won’t know where, or what I’ve been saying to you. You won’t remember Piper, either.”

Piper gave her a wave and a nasty smirk. Blue rolled her eyes at her and turned back to Neeve.

It seemed unfair – she’d give her power to Piper, and Neeve the key to finding Glendower without being able to tell Gansey about it.

The thought made her crunch her mouth into a miserable line. She missed Gansey, and she missed Noah, and Adam, and Ronan, more than anything. She missed 300 Fox Way, the Gray Man reciting poetry and even Orla’s sultry tones on the phone she could hear through her bedroom wall.

But if Gansey was looking for her, she was keeping him from research and Glendower hunts, and the sooner she got back, the sooner they could try to stop Neeve.

She met Neeve’s eyes over her cup. “Okay,” she whispered, biting down on her lip so hard she was sure it had to draw blood. “If it means I’m home before Christmas, I’ll do it.”

* * *

The familiar shadows on the ceiling did nothing to soothe Gansey’s mind when he turned around in his bed for the millionth time.

He had knocked on Ronan’s door earlier to apologize for not trusting him about Henrietta, but when he had experimentally opened the door, Ronan’s room was as deserted as Noah’s had been for weeks now. He hadn’t seen him ever since Blue was kidnapped.

He turned over again and looked at his phone. He missed the calls from Blue. Just to hear her voice over the line, and then maybe drive up to 300 Fox Way to see her wrapped in an oversized coat, sitting on the front steps and then slipping into the Pig with him. He remembered the way just sharing the space in the front seat with her would set his heart on edge and soothe him at the same time, her presence his doom and his lifeline.

His phone pinged. It was a message from Henrietta, but he left it unopened and slid his phone back under his pillow and turned until he was lying on top of the sheets.

She had promised to help him find Blue, and then this. And he liked Henrietta in a way he didn’t usually liked girls, or people in general. When she spoke, she carried a flair of magic and wisdom that should entice him to no end, but all he could think of was the way his heart ached when he imagined Blue’s hand on his arm – a feeling Henrietta’s kiss didn’t remotely come close to.

 _Maybe it’s true,_  he thought belatedly,  _that you only ever missed people when they had given you something you had never experienced with somebody else before._  And by all means, it should have been the other way around, but there he was, yearning for Blue’s smile and the tiny puffs of her breath on his cheek.

For a moment he felt like someone placed a cold hand to soothe him on his back, but when he turned around to see if it was Noah, there was only empty darkness.

Something clunked on his nightstand, and the glitter in the “It’s Always Christmas Somewhere” snow globe rained down on the ugly Santa. Gansey couldn’t even remember where the snow globe had come from.

Had it been a gift from Noah to Blue?

Tiny, magical Blue, who Gansey couldn’t kiss, but knew he would forever yearn for, because she was his true love. If he thought about it, he had been so lucky in finding her, cursed as she was.

How many people could know at seventeen that whatever it took to keep a person at their side was worth it, because their love wasn’t accidental, it was destined to be?

It should’ve made it much easier, his feelings much purer as they were reassured daily – and yet he had managed to get himself tangled up with someone else.

If he had never known Blue, how much could he have liked Henrietta? If he had never known Blue, would he have thought what he felt was love? And what if they never found her?

 _No, you can’t think that_ , he chided himself, and angrily wiped at the tear that was rolling down his cheek into his pillow.

A few years ago, this would’ve been a moment in which Ronan would’ve dumped a gallon of orange juice on his head and made him listen to horrible Bing Crosby songs. Even when it wasn’t angry electronic music, Ronan’s taste in it had always been harrowing.

He sat up and rummaged for an empty cereal box to add another house to his model of Henrietta. But when the smell of hot glue filled his nostrils, the model reminded him too much of the girl who seemed liked she was intent to ruin his life.

Or had he been misleading her?

His phone started buzzing under his pillow and he dragged himself back to his bed, intending to hang up on her immediately. He was sure she meant well, but he needed time to sort himself and his thoughts out first.

“Ah, Gansey, my boy,” garbled the speaker in a different English voice, “good that I caught you. I assume it has not escaped your notice that a ley line is acting different under seasonal circumstances?”

“Professor,” Gansey said, taken aback, a weight lifting from his chest.

“Yes, indeed,” Professor Malory replied. “I hope I didn’t catch you at an inconvenient time?”

Gansey looked at the clock on his nightstand. It was 2:37 am, but he had given up on sleeping this night about an hour ago.

“Not at all,” Gansey said, and for the first time in days, the smile on his face felt real. “What did you want to tell me?”

“The ley line, it is a curious thing,” Malory went on. “As I’m sure you must have noticed with the line you have over there in Texas, its energy contains itself over the winter, unless someone decides to batten on it. Has your line been acting up lately? Gansey? Are you following me?”

He sounded impatient, as per usual, and Gansey let out a shaky laugh. “What is it?” The professor demanded.

“I’m sorry,” Gansey said and settled back against his pillows, the talk about the ley line a welcome distraction. He decided that his personal relations could wait until the morning. “It’s just really good to hear your voice. Go on, please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Hit me up](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask) if you want songs to soothe the pain. I promise your favourite ship is going to make a grand-entrance tomorrow.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was talking about Pynch, of course.
> 
> The book(s) the boys are dealing with in Latin class are Ovid's _Amores_ , "The Books of Love", which are a great piece of literature, but no Latin teacher would deal with them in such a detailed manner, of course.
> 
> I was following a translation by [J. Lewis May](http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/lboo/lboo08.htm), and the eternal advice of [my beta](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique). (You might say this chapter is 'fangirl-approved'.)
> 
> (Note: I wrote this long before I knew that in [one of the _The Dream Thieves_ "outtakes"](http://maggie-stiefvater.tumblr.com/post/134729315676/ive-been-asked-many-times-to-share-some-of-my), Ronan actually quotes _Ovid_ at Adam. Thanks, Maggie!)

Ronan had considered not coming to class at all when he had heard Gansey leaving in the morning without so much as rapping on his door. And he knew he probably would’ve been right to. **  
**

So when he had shown up to Latin, late, their new teacher not batting an eyelash, to find Adam staring motionlessly into the distance and Gansey just running his thumb over his lips when his worried glance met Ronan’s, he was ready to punch a hole through his table.

He kicked it lightly instead, threw himself into the chair and started gnawing on his wristbands to well down the frustration that seemed to suffocate him from the inside.

If he didn’t do something soon, or if Gansey wouldn’t listen, he knew something inside of him would snap. And he didn’t want that.

Paying the teacher who was doing a recap on demonstrative pronouns no mind, Ronan turned his head and decided to stare at Adam. Sometimes it only took three seconds, sometimes a whole minute, but Ronan knew that at some point, Adam would tentatively turn his head, and either look at him with question marks in his eyes or this slightly open mouthed expression that tied Ronan’s stomach together like a cord.

But Adam kept staring ahead. He hadn’t been taking notes for days now. Ronan glanced at the clock. It had been over three minutes. Adam’s head twitched as Ronan furrowed his brows, but he did nothing.

The feeling in Ronan’s chest suddenly became oppressive.  _Something’s deeply wrong here._

“Mr. Lynch,” Mrs. Stringer said, “would you care to repeat what I just said?”

Ronan slowly turned to face her with raised eyebrows and an otherwise blank stare. Mrs. Stringer’s smile was strained, but Ronan knew that she knew that he was her best student. In this class, at least.

“Accusative singular and plural, all genders?” she quipped.

“Illum, illam, illud. Illos, illas, illa.” There was little that Ronan found more tedious than grammar repetitions. He came to these classes to expand his vocabulary.

“Very well,” Mrs. Stringer said, and moved on to Adam. “How about the ablative, Mr. Parrish?”

As if the mention of his name was the key in an engine, life seemed to suddenly ignite on Adam’s features, and he padded around on his desk for a pen and a piece of paper.

“Illo,” he began, frantically scribbling something onto the paper, “illa, illo.”

He slid the note off the side of his desk with a choppy movement so that it fell down and landed next to Ronan’s boot.

“Mr. Parrish?” Mrs. Stringer’s confused expression darkened, and Ronan quickly stepped on the note to hide it with his foot.

“Illis, illis, illis,” Adam finished, and as if a spell was broken, his eyes glazed over again, and he sat upright in his chair without paying Ronan or Mrs. Stringer any mind.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Stringer said, and went back to the blackboard to write down the new chapter they’d be translating.

As soon as she had turned her back to them, Ronan reached down under his desk and picked up the note. Making out Adam’s handwriting even if he wasn’t in a hurry was not an easy task to begin with, but after squinting at it for a few minutes, Ronan set it down on his desk:

_don’t let me fall asleep_

But what was that supposed to mean? Ronan glanced over at Adam again – he didn’t seem tired, he seemed like his body had shown up to school instead of his mind. Or did he want Ronan to keep him from falling asleep at all?

Ronan could do that. If Adam let him into his apartment later.

Ronan ran his hand over his head and slouched back into his chair. It was good that everybody seemed to think he was an asshole, he thought, and started chewing on his wristbands. Not even he could comprehend how much he really cared sometimes.

“Parrish, I’m coming around for that study session you mentioned last week at eight, right?” he asked as he sidled up to Adam after class. Better not to ask yes or no questions.

Adam cocked his head to one side and gave him a long glance.

“See you then,” Ronan said before he could decline and left to go to his car. Whatever was wrong with Adam, it made Ronan something he hadn’t been in a long time: afraid.

* * *

Cabeswater had had Adam sitting at his desk for half an hour after he’d returned from work, doing nothing. He knew that he could really use a study session.

 _I do not think it is a good idea for the Greywaren to come here_ , Cabeswater said in his head.

 _But I need to study to pass my exams,_  Adam argued,  _and he’s been helping me with Latin._

Adam could feel Cabeswater trying to figure out what an exam was. Immortal forests did not have a concept of being tested.

 _It’s like when you let me answer questions in school,_  Adam thought.  _I need to keep up an appearance so no one will get suspicious._

Cabeswater was silent for some time, but Adam sensed trees swaying in the wind in what seemed like a nodding motion. It would be alright.

When Ronan pulled into the parking lot and jumped up the stairs of St. Agnes, Cabeswater had Adam standing at the door to greet him.

“Welcome,” Adam said, and stepped aside to let Ronan in with an opening gesture, “I appreciate your efforts in helping me study in order for me to pass my exams.”

Adam flinched internally at Cabeswater’s stilted words and tried to give Ronan a desperate look despite everything.

It seemed to work, as Ronan only raised an eyebrow and commented: “No problem, man. Where do you wanna start?”

He slumped down on Adam’s mattress and stretched over to reach his schoolbag, which caused his shirt to ride up a little.

There was no reason at all why Ronan should be dressed like this on a day that had promised overnight frost. And yet there he was, half-lying on Adam’s bed in his shitty apartment that only had half a radiator and where you could see your breath most of the time, looking up at him with nothing but the intention to help him.

The thing about Ronan Lynch was that he struggled so much with expressing his feelings you had to read twice as much into his actions.

Adam would’ve liked to smile. He also would’ve liked to take a minute to think about this. But Cabeswater was still letting him stand in the middle of the room, looking at Ronan.

 _You need to tell him “Today’s chapter,”_  Adam prompted Cabeswater,  _and you need to sit down next to him._

Because even with a million little gestures, in the end, Ronan was always waiting for him somehow, somewhere. Waiting for Adam to reach out and make up his mind about something he could never quite grasp the concept of.

“I would like to start with today’s chapter, if you will,” Cabeswater said for Adam and sat down on the other edge of the bed.

Ronan nodded, but looked skeptical. “Do you want to have a look into the book, or – ”

 _You need to sit closer to him to see what he’s talking about in the book,_  Adam told Cabeswater.  _I never sit this far apart from him._

Adam could’ve sworn he had heard the forest sigh, but for his plan to work, he had to exhaust Cabeswater by telling him what to do so it wouldn’t lose its cover.

Cabeswater made him sidle up close to Ronan, who had just opened the book on his lap. He was sitting so close, in fact, that all of their thighs were touching and there was no space for Adam’s arm left.

To Adam, who could not feel his body and was just moved around with it, this situation was not as strange as it might have been, but he could see Ronan’s grip on the book tense just the slightest bit and he avoided turning his head when he spoke to Adam.

 _Is this close enough?_  Cabeswater inquired. They really were impossibly close.

 _Yes, it should do_ , Adam replied, strangely taken aback by the clarity in which Ronan’s eyelashes suddenly appeared in front of his eyes. He wished Cabeswater wouldn’t stare at him so creepily. He also never wanted to move again.

Ronan cleared his throat and scratched his head. “So, do you just want to go over the text again and translate it?”

He still avoided Adam’s creepy stare. Adam tried to internally poke Cabeswater to say yes.

“That sounds like a good idea,” Cabeswater replied, in the same sort of stilted voice Adam would or could never use. He wished he knew what Ronan was thinking.

“Elegy two it is, then,” Ronan said and began to read:

          _“Esse quid hoc dicam, quod tam mihi dura videntur_

_Strata, neque in lecto pallia nostra sedent,_

_Et vacuus somno noctem, quam longa, peregi,_

_Lassaque versati corporis ossa dolent?_  – do you need any vocabulary or do you remember?”

Cabeswater leaned forward and looked down at the text.  _What am I supposed to do?_ it asked Adam.

 _Translate what Ronan is reading into English,_  Adam said. The forest was tiring him out, and he had to stay awake.

 _But surely he is able to do that himself?_  Cabeswater asked.  _That seems silly. Or is it common practice to read love poetry to each other?_

“Do you need me to repeat it?” Ronan asked, trying not to breath into the space where Adam’s hair was now tickling his face.

 _Just do it,_  Adam urged Cabeswater.  _It will make the Greywaren happy._

There was a judgemental silence in Adam’s head, but Cabeswater sat back and translated: “Who is it that can tell me why my bed seems so hard, and why the bedclothes will not stay upon it? Why has this night – oh, how long it was, dragged on, bringing no sleep to my eyes? Why are my weary limbs visited with restlessness and pain?”

Cabeswater looked expectantly at Ronan, who was sitting stock-still on Adam’s bed and blinked disbelievingly.

“Do you want me to go on?” it asked. Normally, Adam would have had to look up at least five words in this sentence, and wouldn’t have known where to split for the different questions, but of course Cabeswater was fluent in this language.

Ronan shook his head. Then nodded. “You remembered that…” he checked the book again, “all correctly, I think. Yeah. Do you want to go on?”

“If it makes you happy,” Cabeswater replied, took the book from Ronan and began to read.

Ronan was sitting in mild shock as he watched Adam read love poem after love poem, some of which would have taken hours, if not days to translate properly. But Cabeswater was relentless, and did not stop until the moon was shining into the window and the book was over.

It barely stifled a yawn. The motion of the book shutting sprang Ronan into action.

“Let me make you a coffee,” he said and got up. Cabeswater made Adam follow him into the kitchen and watched him prepare it. Ronan looked familiar with this kitchen, at home between the strange array of Adam’s things.

“I’m not sure if I should have a coffee at this hour,” Cabeswater said. Adam wanted to groan. He needed the coffee. He  _had_  to stay awake.

“Are you alright?” Ronan asked. “You love coffee.”

 _That’s right,_  Adam quickly supplied to make Cabeswater accept it,  _I would never refuse anything from Ronan._

 _I did not realize the Greywaren had such easy access to my magician,_ Cabeswater grumbled as it reached out with Adam’s hand and took the cup of coffee from Ronan’s fingers.

Ronan smiled like a snake.  _Doesn’t he have easy access to your anything?_ Adam asked, and was glad that he was not able to blush right then.

“Thank you for this,” Cabeswater said and took a sip, “but I think you should leave now. I would like to go to bed.”

This was the moment Adam had been waiting for: Cabeswater was exhausted. So was he, but he just had to stay up a little bit longer so that he could tell Ronan. And Ronan – Ronan could do something about it.

“Oh,” Ronan said. His voice sounded alarmed. “But you promised to come driving with me tonight.”

Maybe the reason why Ronan refused to lie was simply because he couldn’t do it, Adam mused.

That’s true, he told Cabeswater, you can’t slip now, he’ll know.

“Oh, but I’m – ” Cabeswater set the cup down. I would never refuse him anything, Adam reminded it. “So tired,” Cabeswater finished, and Adam could feel it falling asleep.

Just like the last times, feeling was slowly but steadily returning to his limbs, an experience akin to having blood go back into your feet like they had fallen asleep, just all over his body.

He felt triumphant for having tricked Cabeswater, even if just for now, but as soon as it was completely gone, he couldn’t help but keel forward into Ronan’s arms.

“Oh my God,” he breathed in relief and clung to Ronan’s shoulders as his strong hands steadied the small of his back. “Oh my God, thank you, you did it.”

Ronan patted his back and placed his chin on Adam’s shoulder. “Yeah well, no problem Parrish, but what the fuck is going on?”

He sounded conflicted. Adam realized that as far as he was concerned, Adam had been the same the whole time, just with extra strange behavior.

“Okay, don’t move,” Adam whispered, “you might wake Cabeswater.”

“What?” Ronan replied in the same volume.

“Someone has summoned Cabeswater, and it has chosen to possess my body to wait until they show up. Whoever it is is also draining the ley line, and Noah, I guess. I just had to get Cabeswater to go to sleep so I could tell you.”

Adam righted himself a little so he wasn’t in the most uncomfortable position anymore, but stayed close.

Ronan let out a slow, shaky breath. “Great,” he sounded bitter, “first a strange girl shows up to take Gansey away from us, then Blue and Noah disappear, something is draining my mom’s only life source, and now you.”

His grip on Adam’s back tightened. “I’m sorry,” Adam whispered.

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Ronan said and moved his hand up Adam’s back. “If I manage to figure out how it’s all linked I’m sure we can fix it.”

“I don’t know,” Adam said, trying to stop his eyes from falling shut, “I’m so tired from fighting back against Cabeswater all the time, I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep it up. Sometimes, you know, I just – ”

He broke off and buried his face in Ronan’s neck, breathing in the smell of leather and warmth. It was the most comforting thing he could’ve hoped for.

“Shh,” Ronan patted Adam’s head, tangling his fingers in his hair. The physical contact sent tiny sparks down Adam’s spine, a sensory overload after a week of basically none.

Then he gently walked Adam backwards out of the kitchen until they reached the bed and sat him down on it. Adam’s head drooped over from the loss of contact when Ronan took a step back and he struggled to keep his eyes open.

Ronan knelt down in front of him and undid his shoelaces, tucking off Adam’s sneakers by barely moving his feet and keeping a steady hand on his shoulder so he wouldn’t fall.

Adam wanted to thank him, but was unable to get the words out when his gaze met Ronan’s and he saw the worry in his eyes. He swallowed.

Ronan put a hand on his back and laid him down on the bed, then slowly stripped him off his jeans so that Adam could comfortably curl up in his preferred sleeping position.

He sat on the edge of the bed, hesitating, on hand on Adam’s shoulder, until Adam patted the space next to him without opening his eyes, and Ronan pulled the cover over both of them.

“Just go to sleep, Adam,” he whispered as Adam buried his face in his neck again. “I’ll look after the rest.”

Adam could count the times he had felt secure in his life on one hand. But when sleep overtook him this time, he not only felt safe, he was also filled with the unerring certainty that it was going to be okay.

_Greywaren semper est incorruptus._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now go read some classics (or [drop me a line](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask) about pynch) ;)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always knew taking Latin in school would pay off some day. (A big thanks to Maggie Stiefvater for making me rediscover my teenage love, and to [my beta](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique), as always.)

Ronan was walking towards the forest when he fell asleep, Adam’s easy breathing lulling him in. But when he reached its outskirts, he could not sneak in between the trees like he usually did, for even the pathways seemed to be blocked by some invisible force that didn’t permit Ronan entry. **  
**

How strange it was, that he had never slept in such close proximity to Cabeswater and yet it rendered him incapable of taking from it. He couldn’t even pluck a flower from the ground.

When he looked up between the trees again, all he saw was Henrietta smiling back at him, that eerie smile that was even more upsetting in reality.

“So you are Orphan Girl!” he said, hiding his shock. “Or did I dream you?”

The girl laughed at him, then her form momentarily flickered out and was replaced by a huge hairy spider that made Ronan flinch. She flickered back into Henrietta and stopped laughing, her expression strangely serene. “Please. You couldn’t dream me if you tried.”

He shot her a dark look. She was beginning to frighten him.

“Darling,” she went on, placing her hands on two trees and cocking her head, “I  _am_  Henrietta. How haven’t you noticed yet?”

Ronan took a step back, but before he could fully comprehend what she meant by that, she vanished again, and he heard her voice whispering into his left ear: “ _Quid scis_?”

He turned towards it, just as it went to his right ear: “ _Quid voltis?_ ”

 _What do you know? What do you want?_  An involuntary shiver ran down his spine and he imagined he must look frightened. He rose his hands to prepare for a possible attack.

She flickered back into being before him and he jumped, at which she laughed once again.

“Oh, no need to get defensive, my darling,” she crossed her arms and cocked her hip. “Well then?”

Ronan let his arms sink again and billowed his nose in disgust. If she wanted to be cryptic with him, then two could play a game. “I don’t know more than you. And you know exactly what I want.”

He wondered when he had decided that letting others assume they knew him had become his default way of dealing with people. It so very rarely worked in his favor.

She smiled savagely. “That’s not a what, my dear.”

_Damn you, Henrietta._

“Well, what do you want me to say?” he spat. “ _Ultio?_  Revenge?”

“For example,” she said. Her tone had almost grown bored. Then she started circling him in graceful strides that didn’t seem to fit her body. What was she?

“You know Cabeswater could grant you the ‘other’ thing, you know?”

Ronan’s shoulders slumped. “What do you mean?” His eyes were fixed on her whenever she was not behind his back.

“Oh, you know. Cabeswater  _adores_  you,” she theatrically clutched her hand to her heart. “And at the moment, Cabeswater occupies Adam. It would all be a lot easier for everyone involved if you’d just let it be…Adam.”

Ronan blinked at her a few times when she stopped walking in front of him. “What?” he said finally. And then he got angry.

“Who do you think I am that you even dare offering such a thing to me?” he growled and advanced towards her. “Do you honestly think that I am so selfishly lusting after him, that I’d exchange the life of a friend to get it fulfilled? Are you even listening to yourself?”

To his surprise, Henrietta had stopped smiling and even taken a few steps back into the forest where he couldn’t follow.

“I was merely suggesting – ” She held up her palms, but Ronan cut her off.

“No. Seriously? I am done with this. I don’t know who you are, I don’t know what you’ve done to Cabeswater or Adam, and what you’re planning to do to Gansey, but I know for sure that you aren’t Orphan Girl, and I’m not coming back until I get rid of you and can come in again.”

And with that, he turned around and marched off, not looking back to see if she followed.

He had to deal with her in reality. And for that, he had to wake up.

* * *

After she had agreed to let her powers be transferred, Blue had been given more freedom around the bungalow. She was allowed to eat whatever and whenever she wanted, she was allowed to read and go outside as long as Piper came with her.

The first time she had seen Henrietta chime in through the doors she had been about ready to jump her, but Piper had held her back with an iron grip that hurt more than Ronan’s around her shoulders and whispered: “Remember that time I had a gun pointed to your head? Don’t think I couldn’t do it again.”

And Blue had wanted to scream and kick her, but a voice in her head, one that sounded too much like surrender to mean it, said  _Pick your fights wisely._  So she had only clenched her jaw and stomped off to the basement, which she had come to see as her room.

A few days later she was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and watching Neeve flit around the meadow in a heavy, furry coat in the dark just before dawn. The procedure of the ritual was more complicated than anything she had seen her do so far, mainly because it required two oak tree stumps for Piper and her to sit on, which had to be positioned in the correct angle on the ley line.

Piper was lounging on the couch and tapping away at her incredibly expensive smartphone. Blue tried to pay her no attention, it made her feel better about what was about to happen, but couldn’t ignore it when Henrietta gracefully sank down next to Piper and cocked her head while staring at her.

“What?” Nobody could draw out a single syllable like Piper.

“Do you honestly just want to be an amplifier?” Blue looked away quickly as she could feel the pitying glances of both women striving over her body. It made her carve her nails deeper into the cup she was holding.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Piper asked.

“It means I might have a more exciting mission for you,” Henrietta said, took Piper’s hand and dragged her out the back entrance.

Blue let out a shaky exhale. Noah appeared on the chair next to her and slid his cold hand over hers.

She looked up into his eyes and turned her hand around with a self-deprecating smile.  “Thank you, Noah,” she said. “Did you – ?”

“I tried,” Noah shook his head. “I can’t.”

All the air she had in her lungs seemed to come out with one single breath. It felt like it would be an appropriate time to cry, but she didn’t know if it mattered all that much now that the end of this was in hand’s reach.

She heard Neeve brushing past the door and her gaze fell onto the two tree stumps now perfectly aligned between the two candles.

“I won’t be able to make you stronger after,” she whispered, her voice barely audible even to herself. “I don’t know how you will – ”

He clamped down on her hand, harder than he ever had before and Blue looked up at him again.

“Once they release Cabeswater and stop draining the ley line. Once…or, well. If,” Noah said and scooted a little closer to her. Blue sucked in a breath. She didn’t want to. But when she looked up at Noah again and the lines of his face already began to blur, she knew she’d rather do it now than never get the chance to.

She pressed Noah’s hand back as hard as she could. Its cold still had a soothing quality to it. “Good-bye, Noah,” she said, and swallowed.

He let go of her hand and poked at one of her springy hair strands before petting her head.

“It’s not,” he said, but he was already so weak that she almost couldn’t feel his hand. “It’s never.”

He flickered out of existence once and came back. “See you on the other side,” Blue said when he let go of her head.

“Hopefully not too soon.” And with a wink and a sad smile, Noah was gone.

Blue felt like the ritual was already over, all her powers taken from her and all she wanted to do was sleep after crying over Noah, but she didn’t seem to have the energy for it.

Even if she tried to, she would not be able to shield herself against Neeve now.

“It’s time.” Neeve appeared in the doorway and held out a hand for Blue to take. Blue followed her outside, the icy wind blowing out the thin sweater she was wearing, but she almost couldn’t feel it.

 _Now just this,_  the voice in her head said again,  _and then get the others to stop Neeve._

“Where is Piper?” Neeve asked once she had seated Blue on the tree stump in front of the big candle, eyeing the first beams of dawn creeping over the trees.

Blue pointed in the direction Piper came running from (or, would have, had she not been wearing high heels and refused to do “plebeian” things like “running”).

“Am I late?” Piper asked, not even pretending to be out of breath.

Neeve’s eyebrow twitched. “What have I told you about moonphases? A minute later and we would have had to wait another month!”

Piper rolled her eyes but sat down on the other stump in front of Blue. Their eyes linked and for some reason, Blue could feel that Piper wanted this as little as she did.

Neeve began the ritual by swinging a pendulum between both of them in a hypnotizing motion until both Piper and Blue had entered a transcendental state in which they saw nothing but each other and everything else was blurred out like white noise.

Blue felt light and relaxed, like the few times she had meditated with Persephone, and the memory put a smile on her face.  _And now let go,_ Persephone said in her head. Or was it Neeve?

It had always been the last step before she had felt like she was floating through the air. Now she felt like something got pulled from her, all the way into Piper, and the candle behind her danced and flickered higher than ever.

But it didn’t leave Blue feeling bereft. She took a deep breath and it was like something had been lifted from her chest, like it would be so much easier to float during a meditation now. It was the deepest breath she had ever taken. Blue began to laugh.

Maybe it was because she stopped mirroring everybody and their powers. Maybe all her feelings were her own now. She felt great as she slipped from the tree stump, still slightly dazed, but able to walk on her own legs.

Neeve was leaning against the wall of the bungalow, eyes closed and still murmuring incantation after incantation. Piper appeared to have sunken into herself, her eyes unfocused but still looking at Blue.

Then Neeve stopped murmuring and for a minute, the meadow was filled with silence.

Blue had never liked the sound of her own breathing so much.

“Can I go home now?” she asked.

Neeve looked up at her as if she saw her for the first time. “No.”

Blue’s spirit fell. “But you said – ”

Neeve slumped down on the front steps. “I said after I had altered your memory, and I can’t possibly do that now, unless you want your only memory to be your potty training.”

Blue started to glower at her again, but Neeve looked up at her and said: “I feel bad for taking you here against your will, Blue. But if it worked, it’s all over now for you. Now, please, give me some time. I want to make this the least painful for everyone involved.”

Blue’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “The least painful for everyone involved?!” she thundered. “The least painful, after sending a long-legged menace to distract your only competitors from their search, after causing one of my friends to be possessed and after stripping me from the only supernatural power I have ever held to help my mom’s business? I might never see my best friend again!”

She was fuming. “Blue,” Neeve said.

Blue just shook her head. “The least painful? You are unbelievable.”

The lightness in her chest was still there, but when Blue slammed the door to the basement and vowed not to come out again until Neeve took her to the front doorstep of 300 Fox Way, all she could feel was rage and the bittersweet taste of a craving for revenge on her tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll accept complaints of any kind.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuses for this.
> 
> [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique) seemed to like it, though.

Adam was a warm, dead weight on his chest when Ronan blinked awake to a stray hair tickling his nose. He took in their scent and Adam’s slow breathing for a moment, and how nicely his hand fit around Adam’s waist.

It was almost too good not to be a dream. The thought made Ronan miss a beat, before he remembered that Orphan Girl – Henrietta – kept him from taking at the moment.

He gently untangled himself from Adam, replacing his chest with a pillow for Adam to snuggle into, and considered just sitting there and watching Adam sleep for a while longer, but he figured Adam would probably be embarrassed about it and would also not be himself when he woke up.

Ronan sighed and scrawled a note on one of Adam’s school folders:  _thx for last night xoxo,_  hoping it would make Adam smile and Cabeswater fumble. Should the forest get all the right (wrong) ideas, see if he cared.

He pulled on his leather jacket and jogged down the stairs to the parking lot. He was lost in thought as he walked to the BMW, last night’s dream and revelation resting heavy on his shoulders along with Gansey’s odd behavior.

Just as he went to open the door, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye that made him stop short. There was a woman in a trench coat leaning against his car. A woman he knew – and wished he didn’t.

It was Piper Greenmantle.

He stared at her, then cleared his throat. “What is this?” he hissed.

“Ronan Lynch?” She looked at him with bright, levelling eyes. Ronan found it unsettling and considered just getting into his car and driving away.

“The one and only,” he said instead and gave her his toothiest grin back.  _Bitch._

She smiled and came a step closer. “Then I might have a deal for you.”

“A deal?” Ronan fought hard not to scoff.  _I don’t make deals with the devil anymore._

“I had figured you wanted revenge on my husband,” she said, taking small steps towards him. Ronan didn’t back away.

“That’s right,” he said, “ _wanted._  Past tense. I don’t know what sort of trouble the two of you are in, but I’m not going to have anything to do with it.”

“Trouble?” Piper laughed. “I’m not in trouble. I was merely wondering – ”

“Do I have to spell it out for you?” Ronan said and curled his fist. “I already got what I wanted. I don’t care what you have to say. Fuck off.”

Piper arched an eyebrow at his choice of words. His grip on the door handle tightened. Her eyes narrowed on his for a second, then she took a glance at her watch as if she was contemplating to argue further and sighed.

She fished a business card out of her trenchcoat and stuck in Ronan’s front pocket. “Remember I offered,” she said, “you might regret your decision later.”

Then she backed away. Ronan sneered. “Thanks, I won’t,” he said, took the card and ripped it into four pieces, before violently pulling the door open and slamming into his seat.

Why was everybody offering him revenge lately? First Henrietta in his dream, now Piper Greenmantle – he turned the key in the engine but stopped before he sped away.

What if they were somehow connected? He had been friends with Gansey for too long to still believe in coincidences. If there was a pattern, it usually meant something.

Henrietta came from his dream and started wrapping Gansey around his little finger. Shortly after Piper showed up again and tried to bribe him with revenge, something Henrietta had also tried to do. Henrietta showed up more frequently since Blue was abducted. Blue was abducted and then Adam was possessed.

Almost subconsciously, his foot pressed down on the gas and he yanked the wheel towards Monmouth Manufacturing.

He had to talk to Gansey. And Gansey had better listen.

* * *

When Gansey had ended the call with Professor Malory, it had been four o’clock in the morning, and even if sleeping would’ve been possible for him, going to bed at that time could not be considered healthy.

So he had taken one look at mini Henrietta and sat down on the couch to wait for the sun to rise.

A strange peace flooded him at the first beams creeping over the horizon, but he couldn’t help his heart from feeling like everything in his life had been moved two inches to the left. Nothing fit, and it wasn’t right anymore.

Talking to Malory had helped, but asking Malory for advice on fending off unwanted attention from a girl just seemed cringeworthy.

He needed to find Blue as soon as possible, and he had to do it without Henrietta.

_Where was your friendly flatmate ghost when you needed him?_

He gave the snow globe on his nightstand a little rub, as if Noah was a genie and this was a way to summon him. They were always underestimating Noah. But someone whose existence was tied to the ley line and used Blue’s energy as a charger must have known where she was.

Sometimes, it seemed liked Noah only materialized in Monmouth when Blue was around. But did that mean that he had already been there and just not visible? Or did it mean that he could go wherever Blue went and could tell him where she was?

“Noah?” he tried. But Noah didn’t show up.

Shoulders slumped, Gansey grabbed his car keys. There was only place left to go now.

* * *

“You didn’t listen to me,” was the first thing Maura said when she opened the door to a boy, who, by any means, should look nothing but bedraggled, but she didn’t think it a fitting word to describe Richard Campbell Gansey III in any state that he was in.

At her words, the boy in front of her pushed back his wire frame glasses and straightened his slightly slumped shoulders a little, but still avoided her eyes. As if he needed defiance to get through the conversation they were about to have but couldn’t quite muster it in front of her.

Maura liked that thought. It was usually Calla who invoked that feeling in other people.

“No, I didn’t,” he admitted, meeting her gaze and jutting his chin out a little as if he expected her to make a fuss about it. Blue probably would.

“Oh, thank God.”

Maura stepped aside to shuffle a slightly confused Gansey past the kitchen into the reading room, the only place that tended to be not crowded on a weekday morning. In passing, she made a head movement towards Calla that meant something along the lines of: T _ea for everybody, don’t bother with a bathrobe. Join now._  Calla’s nod meant that she had understood perfectly. Sometimes being a psychic felt like the best thing that ever happened to her.  _And Blue,_  the helpful voice in her head supplied,  _although that came with a whole bunch of other complications._

“Um, excuse me, but what?” Gansey seemed very tired and small sitting down on one of her chairs in the reading room, as if he wanted to just crawl up and sleep there. Maura was overcome by a strange sort of rightness at the picture she couldn’t have imagined just a few months ago, and she to fight down the urge to just send the boy to bed. Something had happened.

“Well, you obviously haven’t come to us with good news on a morning after a night you’ve barely slept,” Calla said as she brushed past him and pushed a cup of tea in his hand, “such as Blue turning up miraculously on your doorstep again, because I’m sure you would’ve brought her with you.”

Gansey nodded, as if to reassure them it was not him holding Blue captive.

“So, the way I see it, everybody in this room wants Blue to live and preferably be home for Christmas – so we need somebody on the case.”

Calla grimaced at the sip of tea she took after that. Maura decided to blame it on the heat.

Gansey was still nodding, and Maura could feel the responsibility rolling off of his shoulders like waves, mixed with the sense of miserableness and worry of a boy who was forced to grow old past his years.

It was slightly unsettling in a way his presence had never felt before. Like his aura had lost its neutrality.

“Say, Gansey,” she began, “has my daughter ever kissed you lately?”

It was with some relish that she noticed she had timed the question perfectly to see Gansey splutter his tea and the tops of his cheekbones turn slightly red.

A smirk spread on Calla’s face and she raised her eyebrows at Maura who returned her look with a mischievous grin of her own. Making him squirm had not originally been her intention, but it was nice to know that she still had it in her.

“I’m terribly sorry, Ms. Sargent, for making you think that – ” He paused himself. “I can guarantee you that I have no lewd intentions towards your daughter and I know, I mean, I know she wouldn’t – can’t, really, and I’d never, never do anything she wasn’t comfortable with, or – ”

“I know,” Maura interrupted him before he could talk himself into a fury and his face would match the atrocious colour of Calla’s bathrobe. “Believe me, if I had any reason to think otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

Gansey took a big gulp from his tea and swallowed it without making a face. Blue’s taste in men was better than her taste in fashion apparently. Not that Maura could be one to judge, either way.

“But it’s strange,” she went on, flicking a side glance to Calla, “something has shifted, and I’m not sure what it is. Would you be interested in a reading?”

Gansey set his cup down and sat up a little straighter. “Would it help me find Blue?”

Both him and Calla had expectant looks written across the lines of their faces then, and Maura felt once again overwhelmed by the impossibility to explain the feelings she sometimes got about certain things at random times.

“Not necessarily,” she said, “but I feel like I’ve missed something…about you. And I feel like it would help if I could figure it out.”

It was evident that Gansey regarded this with some skepticism, to be finally offered the reading he had asked for almost eight months ago, but there was a nagging question Maura needed to be answered, and she hoped he would cooperate.

He nodded. “Alright.”

Maura opened a drawer to look for her tarot cards, and almost didn’t see Calla slipping from the room, holding up her finger in a ‘be right back’ gesture.

She handed her deck over to Gansey to asked him to knock on the cards a few times before shuffling them. Then he handed them back to her and she spread them out in front of them, in a straight row that she had only managed after years of readings.

“You have to pick one for yourself this time,” she said with a sympathetic smile. “If it’s any help, you can let your fingers hover over the cards for a bit. The right one feels a bit warm sometimes. Or it just…looks right.”

Gansey nodded, like he understood perfectly what she meant and Maura had to force herself to lean backwards, to not seem to overeager to know what the card would be this time.

 _It would have to be Death,_  the voice in her head, less helpful this time, chimed in,  _you know about the inevitability of these things. What are you trying to do here?_

Gansey hovered his fingers along the rows of cards, carefully, like there was much more depending on which card he drew than just Maura wanting a professional second opinion from herself. After a minute, he settled on one near the right end and pushed it towards Maura.

“This one,” he said, his gaze not leaving the card as Maura turned it over.

It was the Page of Cups.

 _Well, that was unexpected._ Maura wasn’t sure whether the voice in her head was able to do sarcasm.

Gansey swallowed when she looked up at him. “This is Blue, right?”

When she furrowed her brows, he added: “She once told me that this was her card. Something about the potential she holds? And that was why you said it wasn’t mine when – ” He broke off.

Maura nodded grimly, tapping her finger against that card. It had Blue’s face on it, it was in Gansey’s hands. What did this mean?

“Maura?” She looked up at Gansey. “What does it mean that I still draw her card?”

Maura let out a throaty laugh that turned into a little sigh towards the end. “If I didn’t know any better, which by all means, I don’t, I’d say she’s your future.  _In_  your future, at least. Your doom, your glory, hard to tell.”

She offered him a small smile and hoped it provided the comfort she couldn’t find for herself.

“Are you sure my daughter hasn’t kissed you?”

The smile finally seemed to reach Gansey’s face as he stood up. “I think I would’ve noticed.”

Maura nodded as he said his goodbyes, still trying to catch a glimpse of what his future could hold, however imminent or not it might be. Making sense of things was what she  _did_. It felt frustrating to see him slipping through her fingers like that without being able to.

“I’ll find your daughter,” he said as she clasped his hand at the door, “I promise.”

“See that you do.” It wasn’t a threat and she said it with a wink, but it still hung more pronounced in the air between them than her rudeness had that first time she had kicked him out of the house.

She wandered back to the kitchen table and sat down in front of Calla, who was unusually pale and wide eyed for this hour of the day and handed her a drink.

“Really? It’s nine in the morning!” she said, but accepted it anyway and downed it in one go, partly because you couldn’t say no to Calla’s drinks, but mainly because this morning session with Gansey’s troubled energy left her feeling drained, like she hadn’t just woken up but was about to go to bed again.

“Thought you might need it,” Calla said, and pushed a piece of paper towards her, “his name is gone.”

Maura set the empty glass back on the table and stared at Calla, rearranging her thoughts. “What?”

“His name is no longer on the death list.”

Maura scooped up the paper in front of her and ran her eyes up and down the list of strangers, looking for six letters that had been crammed in in Blue’s handwriting somewhere at the end. They weren’t there anymore.

 _So that’s what’s happened._  But it opened up a bottomless pit of new questions.

Maura looked up from the list to meet Calla’s eyes. There were only two instances in which a name would disappear from the death list: Either the circumstances under which the prophecy had been had changed – or the person was already dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So what's it gonna be? [Let me know what you think](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask)!


	13. Chapter 13

Ronan pulled into the parking lot at Monmouth Manufacturing and sprinted up the stairs, crossing his fingers that Gansey would be in and not too mad at him.

But when he reached the second floor, he stopped short: The door was standing open, and the sound of a sultry female voice filled the apartment. He pushed the door open a little wider and tip-toed into the room.

Henrietta, the miniature city, was standing unharmed in front of him, where it belonged. Henrietta, the girl, however, was sitting on Gansey’s bed, facing away from him and talking loudly on the phone. She had never looked more out of place.

Ronan crossed his arms and was about to clear his throat to kick her out, but then he understood what she said and stopped in his tracks.

“You did what? Oh, Piper, that was stupid,” she said. So he had been right about their connection.

“No, Piper, I told you, he’s not dumb, he just has different priorities than the rest!” She exhaled loudly and Ronan approached her from behind. “You can’t just go around underestimating a threat like him.”

Ronan had the weird feeling that they were talking about him. And that it was a conversation he wanted to end as quickly as possible.

“Don’t snap at me,” Henrietta went on. “I’m not going to ‘take matters into my own hands.’ We had agreed Gansey was my responsibility and he was yours, you screwed up, so you go and fix it.”

Ronan drew in a sharp breath at that. What was that supposed to mean, ‘Gansey was her responsibility’? How had he managed to dream up a megalomaniac monster that apparently wanted to kill his friends?

Chainsaw, who had been sitting on Gansey's desk happily gnawing away at the mint plant, suddenly recognised him and greeted him with a loud 'Kerah' before he could do anything to shush her.

Henrietta turned around immediately and their eyes locked. Ronan’s heart skipped a beat. He prided himself in his fearlessness and how he could go through almost any situation without anxiety, but her deep dark eyes opened a pit of fright in his stomach.

“He’s here,” Henrietta hissed into the phone, “do something! Now!”

Her words momentarily broke his spell and he lurched forward, ripped the phone out of her hands and threw it out of the window. Then he reached around her and pulled her off of the bed, securing her arms behind her back.

Henrietta groaned in discomfort. “What do you mean,” Ronan hissed into her ear, “Gansey is your responsibility?”

She just rolled her eyes and snapped her fingers. At the click, Ronan’s hands were yanked off of hers and suddenly he was the one who had his hands tied behind his back, struggling against invisible bonds. She turned around and eyed him with malicious pity.

“I’d say it’s none of your concern,” her tone was cruel, “but then, Gansey is one of the few people who actually concern you, no?”

Ronan narrowed his eyes and bared his teeth at her like a wolf. She snapped her fingers again and Ronan felt a blindfold snaking around his eyes.

“But you don’t have to worry,” she went on. “See, the lovely thing about you not ever trusting anybody for me is that nobody even considered distrusting me just because you do.”

She patted him on the back and a creak from the door announced the presence of a third person in the room. Ronan hadn’t seen Noah for ages, but just for a second, he hoped it would be Gansey to witness Henrietta tying him up. He would definitely believe him after that.

But it was Piper. “H?”

“Over here,” Henrietta said. “Should I knock him out for easier transportation?”

“You’ve already got him blindfolded,” Piper replied. “No need to get inhuman.”

Henrietta’s voice sent a chill down Ronan’s spine that he could feel straight to his bones: “But I am not human.”

Her laugh made Ronan want to vomit just as much as the scarf Piper started stuffing into his mouth as a gag. “Now get him out of here before Gansey comes.”

* * *

When the sunlight tickled Adam’s eyelids, his first instinct was to curl closer into himself. Did he have work today? He hoped Cabeswater had his schedule internalized and would manage to show up whether Adam himself was awake or not.

It had been a long time since he had felt this comfortable lying only on his mattress. He pressed his nose into the pillow and could detect a faint trace of something that reminded him of leather and dust, something dark and very unmistakably Ronan. He sighed.

Maybe Ronan could do something now that he knew. He hoped he would be able to thank Ronan in person. His eyes snapped open. Was he allowed to think something like this without conveying too much to Cabeswater?

He reached up to rub the sleep out of his eyes, then stopped mid-motion to look at his hands.

Was Cabeswater still asleep? Excited, he got up and went to the bathroom, chugging back a glass of ice-cold water that had woken Cabeswater last time. It remained silent. Adam could only feel it in his peripheral vision, but there was no doubt:

Cabeswater was gone from his body.

All the air left him at once and he reached out to touch the mirror and his cheek with the other hand, the corners of his mouth pulled up in an incredulous laugh.

He had never been so glad to see his face in the mirror and know it was him, just him.

 _Thank you,_  he mouthed at his reflection, and heard Cabeswater humming in the distance. It wasn’t angry, it didn’t want anything from him, it had been trapped in Adam’s body as much against its own volition as Adam.

He went back to his room and found a note on his desk, that made him blush first and then chuckle.  _Leave it to Ronan to try and make a magical forest squirm_. But had Ronan managed to free him of Cabeswater?

Adam pulled on a jacket and a pair of pants that didn’t have grease stains all over it, grabbed his keys and rushed to the door. When he yanked it open, there was already someone standing outside of it.

“Gansey?” Adam couldn’t say why he was the least person he’d have expected there, but Gansey had seemed unusually strained and pre-occupied the last few days.

Gansey nodded. “Is Ronan here?”

“Well, good morning to you too,” Adam said and let him in. “I was just about to go looking for him.”

“Sorry, Adam,” Gansey said and let himself fall down on Adam’s chair, running his thumb over his lower lip and his eyes around Adam’s room with such rapid movements it made Adam anxious. “I just… When have you last seen him?”

Adam didn’t like the way Gansey looked at him now and asked this question at all. He sat back down on his mattress. “Well, he was here yesterday to help me with Cabeswater, and then he must’ve left this morning.”

Gansey scowled in confusion. “What did you do for Cabeswater yesterday? I thought you had work.”

“I did,” Adam squirmed a little, “it’s just that Cabeswater had sort of…taken hold of my body and I was not able to control anything I did or said anymore unless it fell asleep, so I needed Ronan to stick around until I could tell somebody.”

Gansey’s face fell.

“But it’s alright now!” Adam reassured him. “I swear I’m back to being myself. I mean, I wouldn’t tell you this if I wasn’t, would I?”

But Gansey had started shaking his head and running his thumb over his lower lip again. “Oh no, no, no, no, no,” he muttered. “He was right! He was right and I didn’t listen!”

Then he turned to Adam. “Ronan and I had a fight a few days ago, and I don’t know why I wasn’t concerned when I stopped seeing him afterwards, I guess I just figured he’d be here, but then this morning when I came back after I’d gone to see Maura, our place was a mess and I found a broken phone on the floor.”

He shook his head. “I apologize profusely, Adam, I haven’t paid a lot of attention to you or Ronan lately – and I haven’t seen Noah in over a week.”

Adam awkwardly reached out and patted him on the back. Comforting Gansey was a position he couldn’t remember being in before, and he felt like the only person who’d be good at it was Blue. Adam wasn’t very good at comforting people in general.

“How about I make coffee,” he said, “and then we tell each other everything that’s happened since we’ve last seen each other before we make a plan?”

Gansey nodded in relief and Adam smiled at him. Maybe he was getting better at comforting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique) for being the best beta.
> 
> I don't know if this chapter made it better or worse. [Let me know](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask)?


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique), as always, for beta'ing.

Blue got up from her mattress when she heard a commotion outside the door.

But just as she wanted to carefully press her ear against it, the door was slammed open by Piper, who dragged a kicking Ronan after her.

“Oh my lord, has nobody ever told you that it’s going to be least painful if you show no resistance?” Her voice made Blue sick.

Piper yanked off Ronan’s blindfold and took off his gag. “You – ” Ronan coughed, throat dry from being forced open too long.

“Are what?” Piper said. “A bitch? An abomination? Or just someone who’s hurt your manly feelings? Get over it.”

She shoved Ronan towards Blue. “And get the midget to get you some water. Jesus.”

Ronan turned around and stared at her, incredulous.

“Ronan!” Blue was almost embarrassed by how happy she was to see a familiar face, even if it didn’t look too happy in this moment.

Ronan pulled her in a brief but firm hug, before he began to wheeze again. Blue hurried to the bathroom to get him some water from the tab.

Ronan gulped down half the glass in one go and leaned back against the wall, still panting.

“I’m so sorry,” he finally said and took another sip. “This is all my fault.”

He sat the glass down and covered his eyes with one hand. “I dreamed her up, and now she’ll destroy everything. I don’t even remember pulling her from my dreams.”

Blue stared at him in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”

Ronan took away his hand. “Well, princess. Henrietta. I found her in Monmouth this morning, she said she would take care of Gansey and then Piper and her took me here. But she’s not human, I don’t know what she is, but… Man, I fucked it all up.” He shook his head.

“Ronan, you need to stop,” Blue told him. “I’m sure you can do a lot, but you did not dream Henrietta up. Neeve, my half-aunt, did.”

“Your half-aunt is a dreamer?” Blue wasn’t sure if Ronan’s expression was only so shocked because he considered the possibility of being related to Blue for a second before he remembered that Kavinsky also hadn’t been related to him.

“No,” Blue said, “she’s a witch. A real one. Call her that, if you have to. And she summoned her to distract Gansey from finding Glendower so that she can.”

Ronan’s eyes slid from her and he sank down to the floor along the wall, rubbing a hand along his head. “That explains a lot,” he finally said and exhaled through his mouth.

Blue decided it was better not to ask what had been happening at Monmouth lately if Ronan had outright refused to speak to Gansey.

“But, well, on the other side you can probably dream us up something to get away from here,” Blue nudged his foot with hers. “How about an Audi TT? I hear they’re good for racing.”

Ronan snorted out a laugh and shook his head. “An Audi TT for racing?” His eyebrows shot up. “Nah, maggot, you stay with your experimental fashion.”

Just as Blue wanted to reply something, he sighed. “But that’s not the problem. The problem is that I can’t at the moment.”

Blue furrowed her eyebrows and sat cross-legged in front of him. “What do you mean?”

Ronan scratched his head. “Well, they,” he gesticulated towards the noises the three women made in the kitchen above them, “managed to put Cabeswater into Adam, and ever since it’s been closed off to me.”

Blue stared at him for a second before she threw her head back and started to laugh, a sound that had been missing from her life for over a week and felt foreign but refreshing on her face until it almost turned hysterical.

“What’s so funny about this?” She could hear Ronan scowl.

“I don’t know, it’s just,” Blue wiped a tear from her eyes. “They put Cabeswater into Adam and now it’s closed off to you? I mean – it’s Adam.” She giggled.

Ronan lowered his head and narrowed his eyes down at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Blue caught her breath and stopped laughing. Had she said something wrong? Ronan must have known that Adam opened up to him more than he ever had to any of the others, it was something that Blue had often been envious about – not just the boys’ wordless conversations, but also this implicit trust between them as they had gone down the cave.

“It’s not like it’s any different with you and Gansey,” Ronan said and scrunched his nose a little in what Blue thought looked dangerously close to jealousy.

“What?” She sounded a bit breathless and her heart began to pound in her chest. What did Ronan know? If he had to find out, she had not wanted it to happen while she was trapped in a confined space with him. And what did that have to do with Adam?

“You go on late-night drives, you trust each other…” Ronan swallowed, but never dropped her gaze. “I thought that was what friendship was about?”

If Blue didn’t know Ronan, she would have said that the slight red tinge to his cheeks was the beginnings of a blush, but she did know Ronan, and Ronan did not blush. But she did, as shame clawed at her heart for lying to a good friend for so long and knowing that that was the part of it he would condemn the most.

They continued to stare each other right in the eye, and Blue felt her face flaming up as Ronan’s tinged into a deeper red. She still didn’t know why he was embarrassed by the situation. Neither spoke a word.

Finally, Blue cleared her throat. “Anyway, the reason why you can’t take anything from your dreams could also be because they’re weakening Cabeswater by constantly drawing power from the ley line with their constant ritual place out there.”

She jerked her head towards the little window that overlooked the meadow. Ronan followed her gaze and muttered something that Blue chose to believe was damn witches.

“Wait a second,” Blue said, and inched closer to the door. The voices of the three women upstairs had grown louder and if she paid close attention, she could hear Neeve arguing with Henrietta now.

Ronan followed her lead and pressed his ear against the door, looking at her with a raised eyebrow.

“No, Neeve, you’re not a failed psychic,” Henrietta said in soothing tones. Blue rolled her eyes.

“I am,” Neeve insisted. “There are power surges everywhere on this meadow and I don’t know what’s causing them. Cabeswater has slipped from the body it was possessing and the energy here is too unpredictable as that I’ll ever be able to corporealize it.”

Ronan’s eyebrows shot up and something close to a smile tugged at his lips. “Adam is free,” he mouthed to Blue and she nodded before frowning again. And I gave my powers for this?

“Maybe you don’t need to,” Henrietta’s sing-song went on, “maybe you just need to guide it to the reunion you want to achieve.”

“How do you mean?” Neeve asked.

“Last time you sacrificed your innocence by drugging Blue – but maybe it was not good enough so Cabeswater clung to who it knew – the unearthly boy.”

Both Blue and Ronan inadvertently shook their heads at her choice of words.

“But if we were to sacrifice something else – don’t you think Cabeswater might become more pliant and would agree to share a body with me?”

Blue’s eyes widened as Neeve said, “So you would be united and could reveal Glendower to me?”

“I don’t see why not.” Blue could easily picture Henrietta’s elegant shrug and the sudden delight on Neeve’s face as the solution to all her problems was presented to her with such ease.

Ronan groaned next to her.

* * *

Calla sat her glass down and wiped angrily at her mouth, about to burst into another fit as Maura sat on the couch again, like she had done for days now, still staring at the paper in front of her as if it might begin to talk if she just willed it into being.

“Enough is enough.” Calla stemmed her fists into her hips. “Blue is not going to reappear from you sitting around staring gloomily at this list as if it would change something. Why are you so passive all of a sudden?”

Maura lifted her gaze to look at her.

“Do you know what Blue did when you disappeared, a very forward and dangerous action of yours if you recall?” Calla continued, not backing down. “She begged me to stay in the car while she and the boys went looking for you, like the little brave stray cat she is, because she couldn’t bear the thought that something might happen to me in case you were dead! Do you know how that feels, Maura? Worrying yourself sick about someone and then having to leave it to their family members to do something about it? Because I remember, seventeen years ago – ”

“Calla,” Maura said, quiet but distinct, and Calla stilled, all expectant eyebrows and pent-up frustration.

It had occurred to her that leaving it up to Gansey to find her might not have been the best option, and she would’ve liked to avoid Calla’s rage at her passivity, but she needed to understand the list first.

“The curse has been lifted,” she said with her best psychic voice, the words becoming true as she let them out of her head.

The fight sagged out of Calla’s shoulders, but her gaze narrowed. “What?”

“Gansey disappeared from the deathlist.” Maura circled the empty space at the end of the page as if to mark the spot. “And if you think about it, he was most likely on there because he would’ve kissed Blue at some point this year. We have all tried to see his death but couldn’t, so we don’t know the exact circumstances.”

Calla shook her head. “Blue is your daughter, Maura. She would never...” She broke off, knowing full well that there had been a time when she would’ve said a similar thing about Maura before she got pregnant.

“But my point is,” Maura continued, “that his name is gone because the circumstances of his prophecy have changed – Neeve must have lifted Blue’s curse.”

Calla opened her mouth to reply something and then shut it again. It was a rare occasion that Maura got to see her speechless. Then she furrowed her brows again and sat down on the table in front of Maura.

“You don’t really think Neeve has kidnapped Blue just to do some good deeds and polish her karma, do you?”

Maura exhaled shakily. “No, but I don’t see any other explanation. And it was clear that she would try to do…something to Blue.”

Calla gave her a pointed glare that nearly hissed My point exactly, before folding her arms and looking over Maura’s head into the hallway and shaking her head.

“Do you think if she’s lost her curse she’s also lost her psychic gift?” she asked after a moment, lips pursed.

“She never had any to begin with,” came Orla’s sigh from the kitchen as she balanced a peanut butter and jelly sandwich up to her room.

Maura and Calla shared a brief look and chose to ignore her, before their expressions tightened again. Maura shrugged helplessly and wished not for the first time that Persephone were there to give her some insight she could make sense of.

“I don’t know. Undoing birth curses is very powerful magic, it’s like extracting a very core part of a human being and it takes…” She paused herself and shook her head, disbelieving. “I don’t know where she takes all the energy from.”

Not that Maura knew much about witchcraft, but since her daughter had been cursed all her life, she had researched the subject at some point, and new that undoing curses required a lot of skill, precision and possibly more energy than even Adam was capable of holding by tapping into Cabeswater. Not that she was planning on telling him any time soon. Some powers better stay undiscovered.

Calla looked up at her. “I thought lifting curses sets energy free?”

Maura shook her head. “No, undoing spells sets energy free.” Then they both stilled in realization and she gripped Calla’s hand.

“Calla, what if Neeve starts undoing spells she and other people have worked in the past to get more energy? Maybe she doesn’t realize it will undo the universe at its seams if she continues taking from it?”

“I don’t think that’s her plan,” Calla said, half-joking, but nodded.

Maura let her face fall into her hands. “But when has one of Neeve’s plans ever actually worked?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ([Let me know what you think](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask)!)


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Thanks to my beta [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique) as always - you rock for being probably the fastest, most efficient reader in fanfiction history^^)

Monmouth had an eerie quality to it in the dim light of the afternoon with the evening slipping in when the days were at their shortest.

Gansey and Adam were sitting in the middle of mini Henrietta, Adam cross-legged and Gansey slumped out.

“So Ronan is neither here, nor at mine, nor at the Barns, and his car is still in the parking lot and Cabeswater is gone at the moment,” Adam said and nodded to himself.

Gansey sighed. “I should’ve never let this happen.”

“Stop blaming yourself,” Adam said and closed his eyes. Since he had told Gansey that Cabeswater had literally possessed him and he hadn’t even noticed, he perceived every aspect of Adam’s otherness with more caution.

“I think I’m going to scry,” Adam said, his tone allowing no questions. Gansey frowned in skepticism.

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” he asked, but Adam had already gotten up and was rummaging through the fridge for a suitable liquid. The leftover orange juice seemed to suffice.

“Gansey, Cabeswater knows more than we do. It nearly rid me off my body, but that wasn’t its fault, and if Ronan is clever for once in his life, he has told Cabeswater to show me where he is by now,” Adam said and placed a bowl between them to fill it with juice. Gansey plucked a mint leaf from his pocket and began chewing on it anxiously.

Not for the first time, he wished Noah was there to talk Adam out of this. He seemed to be a lot better at it than Gansey had ever been.

“And I know this sounds strange,” Adam went one as he got himself in position, “but I feel like the time I spent together with Cabeswater has actually strengthened my connection with it. It knows it’s taken more than it had asked for.”

Gansey didn’t like the smile on Adam’s face, but figured there was no stopping him now. “I have Maura on speed dial,” he just said before Adam’s face went slack and his gaze got lost in the bowl in front of him, seeing images eluded to Gansey.

* * *

 

Adam had never gotten such a clear image before when he was scrying. The meadow around him was clear and littered with tiny blue and white flowers, blossoming in spring, their trail leading up a hill to an old forest.

 _Cabeswater?_  he reached out.  _Is this you?_

The wind rustled around him, but there was no visual response, no Latin. Adam’s shoulders slumped slightly and he tried to concentrate more closely, completely blocking out the Gansey in front of him worrying his lip with his finger.

He was used to the forest being cryptic, but not to it leaving without further notice.

“Not exactly, Parrish,” a voice appeared next to him, “that’s about as close as we get.”

“Ronan!” Adam turned around, shocked and pleased to see him standing next to him, hand propped against his sides and face turned up toward the hill.

“Welcome to my mind,” he said with a grim smile and looked over at Adam, who was still gaping at him.

Before he could think about it too much, Adam threw his hands around Ronan’s neck and felt him tense under him, just like he had the night before. It sounded impossible that only last night Adam’s only concern had been whom his body belonged to, and now he was only hoping that Ronan was still alive.

“Are you okay?” he asked as he let go. “Where are you?”

“The fuck if I know,” Ronan said and rolled his eyes. “That Greenmantle bitch kidnapped me. But the good news is, Blue is here, too.”

“Here?” Adam looked around the meadow.

“Well, not here,” Ronan explained. “This is just what’s left of my subconsciousness. She’s in the room they have locked us up in. Bad enough that I have to deal with her when I’m awake.”

“Ronan!” Adam chastised him, but they both knew he was joking. Adam could only imagine what the explosive forces that were Ronan and Blue combined would be able to do, and wondered whether their kidnappers knew what they had brought themselves into.

“Wait… So Piper Greenmantle is working together with Neeve?” Adam asked, confused. If Ronan and Blue were held captive together, they would only have to find out one location.

“Yeah. And if I’ve overheard correctly, they just pulled Cabeswater from you along with some ritual they performed on Blue, so that they could put it into Henrietta any day now,” Ronan said and made a little motion with his head to make Adam follow him up the hill to the forest.

“Isn’t Cabeswater already in Henrietta?” Adam didn’t really know about the locality of the forest, but he knew it could be in dreams and would be as real as it was as if it appeared on a ley line around the world. Well, as real as a supernatural being with trees speaking in Latin was ever going to get.

“No, I mean, they want to let the personification of Henrietta be possessed by it like you were. Remember the little princess Gansey had brought along?”

Adam nodded. “She’s not just named after Henrietta, she  _is_  Henrietta, in human form.” Ronan stopped and scratched his head, as if he knew that that information was a lot to take in.

Adam felt his head going dizzy.

“That’s the reason why I had seen her in my dreams,” Ronan went on. “She sometimes lurks around in the forest and keeps me from going in.”

He held one exploratory hand up and tried to push it past the air between two trees, but it seemed to scrape along like he was pressing it against a wall. Adam shook his head, disbelieving, and stepped up next to Ronan to try it himself.

Their shoulders brushed as he reached out, and Adam felt a pleasant shiver going down his spine.

“But that means she’s already in Cabeswater, doesn’t it?” Adam didn’t know why he was speaking so softly suddenly, when Ronan glanced back at him.

“I guess so,” he said, “but Neeve said they need Cabeswater in her so that they can help her find Glendower together because she can’t enter it in dreams like you and I and her can.”

Adam nodded slowly and tried to piece this newfound information together. It was out of the question that they had to stop whatever it was they were doing as soon as possible – the three women held two teenagers captive and subjected them to rituals that were draining the energy of their hometown. He didn’t even want to imagine what their favor, should they find Glendower, would look like.

“What if we trap her here in Cabeswater?” he said.

Ronan frowned. “How do you mean?”

“You said she’s here in Cabeswater in your dreams. If we manage to trap her there, then Neeve wouldn’t be able to summon Cabeswater inside of her. It’s like trying to fit your jacket inside of its own pocket,” Adam said.

He wasn’t sure where the plan that was forming in his head came from, but when his eyes narrowed on Ronan’s again, he felt like it might be Cabeswater’s very own version of saying sorry. Maybe the forest wanted to keep its independence as much as Adam did.

But Ronan didn’t look convinced. He stared at Adam warily for a second and then looked down to his feet.

“But then we might never find Glendower,” he said, so quietly that Adam wouldn’t have been able to catch it had he not stood so close with his right ear.

Adam blinked up at him slowly when Ronan returned his gaze. “Don’t you think Gansey cares more about your and Blue’s safety?” he said, and nudged Ronan with his shoulder, deliberately this time. He was still only beginning to discover how reassuring human touch could be.

Ronan shrugged. “I don’t – ” he began, but stopped short when he caught Adam’s gaze, because yes, he  _did_  know. He had to if Adam was so sure of that.

Ronan let out a long breath. “Do you have a plan?” he asked.

Adam cocked his head to the side. “Will you be able to bring Blue here?” he asked.

“I guess.” Ronan shrugged again.

“Then let’s meet again here tomorrow at sunset,” Adam said, and smiled up at Ronan. It wasn’t the first time that he had come up with a plan for Ronan, but this time felt different. A lot braver than a game of blackmail and revenge, more liberating in its execution.

Ronan nodded and sat down on the grass. “You going now?”

Adam saw Monmouth flickering back into view around the edges of his vision, the floor pitch black in the darkness until Gansey lit a candle.

“Tell Gansey I’m sorry,” Ronan said, but just as Adam’s eyebrows reached new heights, he added, “and that I fucking called it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry guys - it's all coming together. Come say hi on [tumblr](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask)!


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw so many couples today while I was out Christmas shopping, I was almost beginning to feel a little emotional - but then I remembered that I would be posting this chapter tonight, and that it has got lots of Bluesey and even more Pynch, and let's be honest, that's what I was writing this for in the first place.
> 
> ([alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique) said it was okay for me to do so.)
> 
> I hope this chapter makes you feel as happy as I was writing it.

“What kind of sunset did Adam mean?” Blue asked Ronan the next day. “The one when we can’t see the sun behind the trees anymore, or the actual one?” **  
**

Ronan looked critically at the sun sinking lower and lower over the treetops and reached into the breast pocket of his leather jacket and produced two green pills.

“Better be safe than sorry, we can stick around there for a while after all,” he said, and handed Blue one of the pills.

“What’s this?” she asked and eyed it warily.

“It’s a drug Kavinsky and I used to practice dreaming,” Ronan admitted and focused intently on the pill in his hand. “They put you asleep and into a dream with immediate effect. But I dreamed those up myself. Just in case I’d ever urgently have to dream something up and wouldn’t be able to go to sleep.”

He smiled ruefully. “They’re safe.”

Blue still didn’t quite know what to make of them, but she remembered the last time she had been in Ronan’s dream was after Neeve had drugged her, so she figured it was probably only beneficial.

“After you,” she said, and watched Ronan pop the pill into his mouth. He sat down and was fast asleep a second later.

She took a deep breath, lied down next to him on the mattress and placed the pill on her tongue. Then she swallowed.

The next thing she knew, she was tumbling down a hill littered with white and blue flowers, the smell of summer in the air and the sun tickling her cheeks.

She let out a shrieking laugh at the tumbling sensation, which only stopped when she bumped into something that made her lie on her back. Still laughing, she propped herself up on her elbows and shielded her eyes against the sun.

“Adam!” she exclaimed, as she realized the thing she had bumped into was her friend.

“I was so worried about you!” they both said at the same time and hugged each other. It was the strangest sensation, knowing that they were meeting in a space that didn’t exist, just a sort of shared hallucination between Ronan’s and Adam’s mind and Cabeswater, and yet he felt deceivingly corporeal.

She stepped back from the hug and looked around to where Gansey just got out of a hug with Ronan.

“Jane,” he said and approached her. His expression was guilt-stricken, and he didn’t seem to dare to hug her. “Jane, I am so sorry,” he said.

She rolled her eyes and reached out to hug him around his middle. “Don’t you dare blame yourself for whatever my crazy aunt has come up with,” she mumbled into his chest as she felt his arms slowly coming up to cradle her in them.

She breathed in the light minty smell and allowed herself a second of weakness before she untangled herself and turned around to Ronan and Adam again.

Ronan kicked against four huge pieces of metal with sticks attached to them lying on the ground. “What’s this?” he asked.

“Well,” Adam began, but when he didn’t continue, Gansey scratched his head and said: “We broke the law and stole the official road signs that mark the boundaries of Henrietta in the North, East, West and South.”

Blue and Ronan gaped at him. “You did what?” Blue asked.

“Well, if you think about it – Henrietta is a projection of the town. And we can only trap her, or her spirit, or whatever it is, in Cabeswater if we project the town onto it instead,” Adam explained and picked up two of the signs.

Blue scrunched up her nose a bit and inspected the road signs. “Did you come up with this?”

“Cabeswater did,” Adam said, with a familiar, otherworldly smile. It was a bit like Persephone was looking at her again, and Blue swallowed.

“Works better than a containing spell, I guess,” she said and picked up one of the signs as well. They were hideously heavy, but she’d be damned if she’d let that on. She had tended all of Jesse Dittley’s plants in one afternoon; she’d be able to carry a road sign.

Ronan took one of Adam’s signs and slightly knocked against it. “And where do we put them now?”

Something in the air next to Ronan’s street sign began to flicker. All four of them immediately went into a defensive position and put their signs like shields in front of them, but after a few seconds, the flickering just turned into a pale, smudgy boy.

“Miss me?”

“Noah!” Blue yelled full of excitement, dropped her sign and ran up to hug him (and so that he could pet her hair).

“This is where Cabeswater’s energy is the strongest,” he said and held her close, “so I can still be with you.”

He exchanged hugs and fist bumps with the other boys when Gansey cleared his throat. “Do you think this is still going to work even if this is in your dream, Ronan?” he asked.

“Yes,” Ronan shrugged, but sounded confident about it.

“You know,” Noah said to Gansey, “just because it’s happening in your head, doesn’t mean – ”

“Don’t you dare quote Harry Potter to me right now,” Ronan said and Adam suppressed a smile.

Blue picked her street sign up again. “So how are we going to do this?” she asked and gave him an expectant look.

“I can see the lines she travels on in the forest,” Noah said instead, “and where they leave it again, it’s like a compass. I think if we place the signs wherever they leave the forest, it should work.”

They all gave each other serious looks and tightened their grips on their road signs.

“How many are there?” Ronan asked.

“About four,” Adam said. He had his eyes closed and breathed deeply. “She has left two straight lines of her energy in the forest, I can feel them.”

Gansey was running his thumb over his lip when Adam opened his eyes again. “So do we split up?” he asked.

Ronan shrugged. “Seems logical,” Blue said and linked her arm with Noah’s to set off. Then she turned around to Gansey and smiled. “Are you coming? I don’t think I’m going to be kidnapped here.”

Gansey took his road sign and hurried to catch up with Noah and Blue. She linked her arm through his as well and smiled to herself. It did not feel like being on a complicated mission to trap a manipulative supernatural being in a forest. It felt like a summer spent exploring Cabeswater, and late night drives with Gansey.

She squinted up at his face and tried to fight down the tingling sensation in her stomach when she saw the corner of his mouth tugging into a smile.

_You can’t._

“I’m really glad we’re doing this,” Noah said, and Blue put her head on his shoulder again. “You know, I really tried to tell you, Gansey, but there was just never enough energy for me. I was following you around the whole time since Blue was gone, just in case I could’ve gained a little power at some point, but it’s still not working.”

Blue snuggled his arm and Gansey broke into a cough: “The whole time?”

Blue cocked her head to see his ears turning red. He was avoiding her gaze when Noah nodded with a sly grin and coughed again.

All of a sudden, Noah stopped smiling and looked uphill towards the forest. “The West entrance is over there, I’m just going to put this sign up,” he mumbled, slipped his arm from Blue’s grip and walked towards a small path that led to the trees.

Gansey stopped walking and watched him go. Blue let go of his arm and frowned up at him. “What was that about?”

Gansey looked at his boat shoes and then up at her face again. His eyes were filled with something warm and yearning, but it looked a lot like remorse, and Blue’s stomach clenched together painfully.

“Henrietta,” Gansey answered and swallowed. “She had promised she’d help me find you.”

Blue scoffed.

“And I didn’t realize, at least not right away, that it was all just a farce to distract me from Ronan, and Adam, and that whatever she came up with was never going to work because – ” He broke off.

“Because meanwhile she was making my life hell together with Neeve and Piper. No, I get it,” Blue said, and realized how mean that sounded.

“I mean, it’s okay,” she tried again, “I don’t want you to blame yourself for this, Neeve has promised to release us any day now, she just wants to alter our memory first.”

Gansey gaped at her, but she put up a finger to signal him to let her finish. “But I don’t blame you for being deceived by her. It’s okay, really.”

She took his hand, and Gansey looked down at where their fingers met.

“It’s really not,” he said. “At some point I was spending all my time with her, and then we went to the Christmas fair and she kissed me.”

He looked up at Blue again, who was stunned into silence. “But I swear, Blue, I didn’t mean – I didn’t want to lead her on, I don’t know how it happened, and I didn’t, I haven’t – ”

“Wait a second,” Blue interrupted him and took a deep breath. She knew she was allowed to feel the hurt that had come like a punch in the stomach, but she was not allowed to blame Gansey.

“We have just said,” Blue said with a flat voice, “that she was trying to manipulate you. So it…makes sense.” It still hurt like hell.

“Jane.” He reached out to hug her as if he wasn’t sure as if it was welcome. She pressed her lips together and threw herself into his embrace.

“It was so wrong,” he whispered, “and nothing like this.”

He pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and leaned down so she could just feel the warm puffs of his breath on her neck. It was sending small shivers down her spine and she clung to him even firmer.

“This is all I ever wanted,” he said, and Blue closed her eyes. She had her ear pressed against Gansey’s chest so she could hear his heart pounding in a steady rhythm, agitated, afraid,  _alive._

It was Ronan’s dream, but in her heart, it was all real.

“I would want to – ” she began, but stopped herself.

“Me too,” Gansey’s voice reverberated with his heartbeat.

“The sign is all set up and done,” Noah said as he reappeared next to them. “Group hug?”

“Get in here,” Blue said and reached her arm out behind her to pull Noah in with them.

* * *

 

Ronan watched Gansey hurry after Blue and Noah. As soon as Blue had called after him, he hadn’t even had a spare glance for Adam and Ronan, and it wasn’t exactly bugging Ronan, but. Ronan wasn’t exactly blind, either.

Sometimes he wondered if Adam was, though.

He took Adam’s sign from him and motioned with his head for him to lead the way.

Adam nodded and set off, his lean figure striding a good two feet in front of Ronan, and he wondered if Blue even matter to Adam like that anymore. Or if she ever had.

He couldn’t help but feel like that whatever Blue and Gansey had, their time together that now led to awkward silences when Ronan asked after them, was more than what had been between her and Adam.

Had that been dating, or was Blue just getting to know all of them as a group simultaneously? Ronan tried to remember if there had been a certain level of physical intimacy between Adam and her, but all he could think of was them holding hands and how much it had burned in his gut.

No, if he had to guess who out of the five of them was a couple based on their physical intimacy, he would pick Blue and Noah.

But that was different, the same that Gansey and him falling asleep in the same bed when they had first moved in together was different.

How was it not different with Adam, though? How could it be that you considered some people your brothers, when others were so clearly family?

Adam had stopped walking in front of the forest where Ronan had last encountered Henrietta. He turned around to Ronan, the haughty lines of his face caught in the light of the setting sun, and gestured for him to hand him a road sign.

Ronan could only watch in silence as Adam gracefully sank down and shoved it into the ground, sheer inhuman power pouring from his upper body as he nestled the heavy sign deeper and deeper without making a sound.

He made sure the sign was stable, nodded to himself and set off again, his face half turned to Ronan.

Ronan wasn’t sure if his mouth was hanging open, but he closed it and swallowed anyway. There had been a time when he had seen Adam as a helpless, spineless boy who pathetically wanted things he’d never have the guts to stand up for.

That was not the young man now walking in front of him, who carried supernatural powers and went through hell and back to fight his ground, to do what he had to, but did it on his terms.

Ronan strode a bit faster to catch up with Adam and then fell into step next to him, choosing to admire the expanse of the valley below them instead of looking at Adam.

It felt a lot safer somehow, although Ronan couldn’t quite say wherein the danger of looking at Adam lay.

The walked in companionable silence until Adam put his hand on Ronan’s arm. He stopped walking and closed his eyes.

“It’s here,” Adam whispered, “this is the East entrance.”

Ronan nodded and Adam crouched down again, but this time Ronan kept hold of the sign and dug a little hole in the ground before settling it in.

Adam helped him push until the sign was securely fastened upright, and they both cleaned their hands against their jeans, slightly out of breath.

Then Ronan could feel a slight ripple underneath his feet and saw that where the sign met the ground it had begun to glow in a faint blue light. He looked up to meet Adam’s gaze, who had let out a surprised laugh.

“It worked,” Ronan said, incredulous.

“It actually worked,” Adam agreed, as if they both been doubting it until this very second, and it felt like a massive weight had fallen from Ronan’s chest.

He straightened his back and pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, but couldn’t help his mouth from pulling into a disbelieving smile, much like the one still on Adam’s face.

Adam shook his head and pushed his hand through his hair. Ronan wanted to hug him, but it was different when he hugged Adam than when Adam hugged him, so Ronan kept his fist firmly pressed against his thighs.

“How much time do you have left?” Adam said and looked into the forest before meeting Ronan’s eyes again.

“Until I wake up?” Ronan said and mirrored Adam’s motion. “Hard to say. When I can’t take anything, I can’t really force myself awake.”

Adam nodded, then cleared his throat. “I just wanted to say,” he began and crossed his arms, looking down at his feet where he was bumping his left heel against the toes of his right foot, “I was so glad you understood, the other day. I don’t know how I – ”

“No, really, I was glad,” Ronan interrupted him and smiled up at Adam. It was something he rarely did, and it caught Adam by surprise, if the half-opened mouth and slightly dazed eyes were anything to go by. Or he was just confused.

“I mean, I’m glad you asked me for help,” Ronan said and looked down at his feet again, “and actually let me try and do something, even if it sort of…turned out like this.”

Adam shook his head but uncrossed his arms. “But I’ve let you help me before!” he said.

It was a touchy subject Ronan liked to avoid. Yes, he had helped Adam against his will, but never when there hadn’t been an alternative.

“Yes, but – ” he knew he was going to sound exasperated, “letting me help you and asking for it is different. You never asked before. And I’m just…happy you did this time.”

As soon as the words had left his mouth, Ronan wanted them back. He also wanted to go into the woods and punch something. It didn’t matter what he said, Adam would misunderstand it, he was sure. He flexed his fingers in his pockets.

“You know very well that that’s because I could never repay it,” Adam said with a small voice. Ronan huffed out a breath. He knew this was going to happen.

He threw his head back up. “Oh, and now you can?” he snapped, defensively this time.

To his surprise, Adam’s face relaxed the second he had looked up, and went from pissed off to confident.

“Yeah,” Adam said plainly and took a step closer.

Ronan’s shoulders tensed and he felt his eyebrows rise. “Breathe,” Adam laughed, and Ronan’s body decided to listen to him without his approval.

He poked Adam into his side, and the smile on Adam’s face widened.

“I promise,” Adam said, and took Ronan’s face in his hands, “I promise I’m going to get you out of there. This I can do.”

Then he leaned in with fluttering eyelashes, and Ronan barely had the time to suck in a breath and close his eyes before their noses bumped slightly and Adam’s lips grazed his.

He huffed out a nervous laugh and met Adam’s eyes with a silent apology, before angling his head slightly and letting him in.

Ronan closed his eyes again and let his arms come up Adam’s sides, just how he’d held him multiple times, and pulled him close.

Adam opened his mouth slightly and tentatively sucked on Ronan’s lip before lightly brushing their tongues together and running his hand up Ronan’s scalp.

Ronan’s stomach was clenching together painfully as shivers ran up and down his body and pooled in his gut. He wanted this so much. It seemed impossible that Adam should’ve felt the same.

They broke apart with their faces inches from each other, hot puffs of breath mixing between them and pupils dilated.

 _I have underestimated you,_  Ronan thought, and yearned to lean back in again, to taste Adam against his tongue, but as he closed his eyes, he could feel him slipping from his grip, everything of the green hill and forest around them pouring away until his limbs had grown so stiff, he knew he was about to wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Come say hi on [tumblr](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask)!)


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because hope is kinda my thing. Thank you, [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org./users/alchemistique).

Blue was already awake and watching the cold December sun rising just barely over the tops of the trees on the meadow surrounding them when Ronan finally stirred awake.

The dusty gloom that didn’t seem to pass for the whole day in this place had already covered the elation she had felt in Ronan’s dream, like trapping Henrietta in Cabeswater might have worked, or maybe it hadn’t, but it didn’t seem to matter, because of course it had not changed the situation they were in.

Ronan stared at her for a moment like he couldn’t comprehend who she was, or why she was there with him, before the corner of his mouth pulled up in a smile of recognition and he sat up with a grunt, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

“Sleep well?” Blue asked. It had been almost three hours since she’d woken up.

Ronan eyed her warily. “You were there,” he shrugged. “Did you guys manage to get the signs up on the line?”

Blue nodded and wrapped her arms around her knees. “You?”

Ronan leaned back against the wall. “Yeah, Parrish did.” His eyes widened, like he remembered something that had slipped his mind and Blue wondered whether he felt bad for letting Adam do all the work. Then he let his head fall back and closed his eyes. She had just been glad she were able to come along at all.

She smiled a tiny smile him and nudged his long leg with her knee. “That was successful then!” She tried to sound enthusiastic, and not as tired as she felt. Tired of this tiny room, tired of waiting around in permanent danger of Neeve coming in and trying to modify her memory.

Ronan cracked an eye open. “Do you happen to know which day it is?” he asked.

Blue turned around to the dusty spot in the corner where she had counted the days she’d spent here with lines on the floor and added them together on her fingers.

“It should be the 17th of December, if I counted correctly,” she concluded and perched her head on her knees again, staring against the blank wall. “This is the worst year for Christmas spirit ever.”

Ronan grunted out a humourless laugh. “Speak only for yourself, maggot.”

Blue turned around and saw him looking at his hands in his lap and shaking his head. She bit down on her lower lip. Ronan was not wearing his smile like an armour anymore, and she wasn’t sure how to treat this version of Ronan without overstepping any boundaries.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and reached out with her hand to touch his leg but stopped midway. “Why are you asking?”

Ronan met her eyes. “Gansey’s leaving for home tomorrow,” he said, tone painfully left of emotion, but Blue knew what he meant.

“Oh.” It was a tiny sound she made, but it contained all the helplessness that began to fill her heart in that second. If Gansey was going home the next day, her chance to see him again before Christmas was decidedly slim, even if Neeve let them go in the next five minutes.

Gansey going home meant Monmouth was empty, with only Noah half-able to be there, and Adam alone, maybe able to contact them, but it was not like he could quicken the process of their release – if it was, as she still tried to believe, a process at all and not just something Neeve and this horrible Henrietta girl kept on saying.

Blue felt Ronan tugging at the oversized sweater she was wearing until she was sitting against the wall next to him and he put his arm around her shoulders, his hand on her head strangely reminiscent of Noah.

She felt his sigh reverberate through her whole body, and a tear snuck out of her eye before she could wipe it away unseen. She had never wanted to be home so badly.

“I know,” Ronan’s voice was muffled because she had her ear pressed against his chest. “But they haven’t forgotten about us. They’ll be here.”

Blue dabbed at her cheek before she would soak Ronan’s shirt and ruin the moment. “But how?” she asked, almost accusingly, her voice thick with the tears that were about to come. “How do you know?”

“What can I say, maggot,” Ronan said with half a shrug and something that looked dangerously close to a comforting smile on his face as he tore a piece of cloth from his already ripped shirt and offered it to her as a tissue, “I’m a believer.”

* * *

 

Gansey brought Adam back with him after school this Friday, when Helen was already waiting to pick him up with her helicopter.

“I’m sorry, Adam,” Gansey said under his breath as they got out of the car, “but this is the best chance we’ve got at getting to them.”

Adam nodded silently and patted the scrying bowl he had stuffed into his bag.

“Hello, brother dearest,” Helen said as she came up to hug him, “are we bringing young Adam here home with us for Christmas?”

She gave Adam a strangely appraising look that made him straighten up and shoot Gansey a worried look.

“I’m afraid not,” Gansey said. “Actually, before we go home, we have to do something first.”

Helen sighed and wrapped herself tighter in her coat. “Sure, boys. Don’t be too long, I’ll wait in the heli.”

“No, I mean,” Gansey tried to reiterate, “we need to take the heli somewhere to pick up Jane and Ronan.”

Helen’s face went blank. “Come again?”

“Well, our friends have been kidnapped. And we have to…pick them up from where they are. With your help, preferably.”

Gansey was wringing his hands together and hoped that Helen would do him yet another favor.

“And where exactly would that be?” she asked.

“That’s where it gets complicated,” Gansey said. “Adam will be able to tell you when we’re on our way.”

Helen’s eyes wandered to Adam again. “That’s where it gets complicated?” she said with an incredulous laugh. She probably thought Gansey was kidding with her. “You’re telling me that you not only want to be late for Christmas because of a potentially dangerous rescue mission, you also want me to fly after directions and not coordinates?”

Gansey and Adam looked at each other. How did Helen always make all of his plans sound so stupid?

“Yes,” Gansey said.

Helen crossed her arms and considered this for a minute, tapping her index against her elbow. Then she sighed, glowered at them and handed out the headsets.

“You owe me for this,” she emphasized, and to Adam she said, “And you better be good at giving directions.”

“Thank you,” Adam said when he got his headset.

“It’s Christmas, after all,” Helen replied. Then she climbed into the cockpit muttering something like “why are all the pretty ones crazy?” and started the engine.

Gansey shared another look with Adam and mouthed ‘you ready?’ at which Adam got his scrying bowl and bottle of water out of his bag and nodded.

Gansey gave him a thumbs up and joined Helen in the cockpit whereas Adam climbed into the backseat and prepared his scrying bowl.

“What are you doing?” Helen’s tone was a mixture of worry and panic.

“He’s scrying to tell you where we have to go,” Gansey answered, glad that they were already in the air and Helen less likely to turn around now.

“He’s doing what?” Helen asked, then corrected herself. “You know what? I don’t actually want to know.”

“Just aim for the usual route at first,” Adam said, figuring that going with the ley line had to be right.

Then he took a deep breath, closed his eyes and looked into the bowl on his lap.

“Come on, Cabeswater,” he whispered, “show me where the Greywaren is.  _Praesenta mihi._ ”

The bowl in front of him filled with colors, swirling from brown to blue to green, until he could see where the ley line usually went through Cabeswater, as if it were a moving map.

 _Cabeswater?_  Adam asked in his head. _Is that where Ronan is?_

Instead of an answer, the image in the bowl panned out and showed Adam a route along the ley line that led away from Henrietta, and deeper into a nearby forest.

_Greywaren in silvam est. Vestigate lucum._

“Do you see the forest in the north?” Adam asked and looked up from the scrying bowl.

“Yes,” Helen said. She sounded strained.

“It’s in there, we’re supposed to look for a meadow. I’m trying to get a clearer view,” Adam told Gansey and went back to scrying.

“Whatever this is supposed to be, we are definitely not doing a Mission Impossible number and flinging down a rope so people can climb into the helicopter,” Helen said and steered towards the forest.

The images that came to Adam were blurry, but if he squinted a little, he could see a snowy meadow with a bungalow and what looked like a ritual place in the middle of it. He swallowed when he saw the enormous flame of the candle flickering always higher.

“I can see it now,” he said, and looked up.

Gansey was beaming at him. “Is there a place we can go down on nearby?” he asked, hardly hiding the excitement from his voice.

“I think so,” Adam said, trying to make out more from the picture in front of him. “There’s a small hill behind some tall trees about a mile from the clearing.”

“Did you get that, Helen?” Gansey asked.

Helen sighed. “This would be so much easier with coordinates.”

“Sorry,” Adam said, and received his first ever smile from Helen. “It’s just northwest from here, not far.”

“Excellent,” Gansey breathed, the usual energy Adam had missed pulsing through the air around him again.

Helen lowered the heli a little when she spotted the hill Adam had been talking about. The image in Adam’s bowl began to flicker.

“I’m impressed,” Helen said as they sank lower, “that for once you have a plan that seems to work.”

When neither Gansey nor Adam responded to that, she gave Gansey a sideways glance. “Wait,” she said, “you do have a plan, don’t you? I’m not storming into a camp of psychos armed with nothing but a nail file!”

“The word you’re looking for is psychics,” Gansey corrected her just as the helicopter was hovering inches above the ground.

Then the image in Adam’s bowl died completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please come [talk to me](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask) about Helen and how she most definitely has a bit of a crush on Adam. (Who doesn't.)


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what it says about me that I found writing this chapter the most fun.  
> (And once again, thanks to [my beta](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique).)

“This would all be a lot easier to deal with if you wouldn’t keep occupying  _all_  the space there is on this mattress,” Blue grumbled and pinched Ronan in his side.

He rolled his eyes and pinched her back. “You kept insisting you weren’t the ‘damsel in distress’ and that I wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor, because it would be bad for the quality of my sleep.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to kick me to it,” she said and crossed her arms from where she was jammed between his hip and the edge of the mattress. “At this rate, it would be easier to share a bed with an adolescent goat.”

“You’re not my preferred bed partner either, so can you shut it now?” Ronan growled back and turned to his side to leave her a bit more space.

The thought of Adam pulled flush against his chest was almost painful at this point. But he tried not to think about him too much after he had kissed him in the dream, because he still had a hard time figuring out how real it had been for the both of them. And because he really had no excuses to blush in front of Blue anymore.

He didn’t mind Blue as a cellmate too much. Of all his friends, she was the least complicated to deal with in terms of worrying, body warmth and…awkward situations in the morning.

Blue crawled up so she could face him. “See?” she said, and stretched all her limbs. “Enough space for everyone.”

He shook his head but couldn’t help a smile from passing over his face. Incredible how the little maggot had grown on him.

“Time for one last late-night spying session?” she asked and poked him in the side again.

“If you insist,” he said, and pushed himself up to sit beside the door.

They had soon found out that Henrietta and Neeve had a cup of tea every night just after the moon rose over the trees to strategize their further actions. Ronan had suspected a trap first, they must’ve been aware that they could hear them, but then he had realized that there was nothing Blue or him could do to stop them, so the only thing left for them to do was try to find out as much as they could on the off chance that Ronan could tell Adam something useful should they meet again in his dreams.

“I am not used to my endeavors not going as planned, I have to admit,” Neeve said. “And this one has been such a ride, with complications springing up like mushrooms all over the place. I just hope it will all be worth it in the end.”

“Speaking of which, may I ask why you want to wake Glendower?” Henrietta asked her, and Blue inched a little closer to the door. Ronan sometimes forgot that Neeve was family for Blue, and how that meant exactly the same and two entirely different things to the both of them.

“This is my business and my business alone,” Neeve replied, not without a sharp edge to her tone Ronan hadn’t heard from her before.

“So not even Piper knows?” Henrietta asked.

“Piper? Are you mad?” Neeve replied, and Ronan nearly smiled. “You’ve seen what happened the last time you gave her too much information. There are two future mind alterations too many in the basement at the moment.”

Blue swallowed. She had told Ronan the bargain she had struck in change for her powers, and Ronan apparently had to pay the same price now. What he didn’t tell her was that he suspected Neeve was unable to do it, and they would be stuck with her until she had found Glendower.

“Yes,” Henrietta said, “but she managed to get the Dreamer – casualty or not – here without being seen or causing trouble. She has worthy qualities.”

Neeve snorted. “As a pawn. And now as an amplifier who has never learned how to shield her powers so I will not get rid of her. Nevertheless, I do think I need a better sacrifice than just my innocence to summon Cabeswater, the last time it simply clung to the last one sacrificing themselves to him.”

Ronan pressed himself against the wall to better catch her next words when he heard the word ‘sacrifice.’ The last ritual he had seen Cabeswater involved in had ended with his Latin teacher dead, after he had threatened to kill both Adam and the woman conspiring above him. Strange how the tables could turn.

“So that leaves him out of the options,” Henrietta remarked.

“Exactly,” Neeve exhaled. “A sacrifice must be made with virgin blood, and his is tainted.”

“Oh,” Ronan could almost hear Henrietta’s sneer, “I was just about to say if that’s the criteria you can sacrifice any of these kids.”

Ronan watched Blue’s brows furrow and his hand clamped down hard against the ground. Were they honestly discussing which of his friends they were going to kill?

“No,” Neeve said decidedly, “virgin blood refers to blood that has not been used in a ritual or sacrifice before. Adam sacrificed himself to Cabeswater, you can’t give it something it already possesses.”

“So Blue?” Henrietta asked. Blue’s eyes widened momentarily and Ronan tried to place a reassuring hand on her leg, but wasn’t sure how comforting that gesture was. His own heart was beating in his ears.

“Blue would be too risky since I have stripped her of her powers. It was a forced sacrifice, but as sacrifice nonetheless,” Neeve said, but to Ronan’s surprise that didn’t seem to relax Blue at all.

“Well…” Henrietta began, but Neeve interrupted her. “If you’re suggesting the Dreamer, you might want to think again. He’s the most resourceful thing in our possession right now – and a sacrifice Cabeswater would not accept anyway.”

The blood was now pounding in Ronan’s ears. He was not a thing of possession. He was his, his own, and he refused to belong to anyone or anything else, Cabeswater be damned.

“Ronan,” Blue whispered suddenly, her face white as a sheet, “I have to tell you something.”

“I know,” Henrietta said above them as Blue clutched his hands, “but how about the one who slipped from Cabeswater seven years ago? It is like returning a long lost item on loan, the number making it extra powerful.”

Blue swallowed and forced Ronan to look at her. “Remember how my mom and I go on spirit watch every St. Mark’s Eve?” she asked.

Ronan nodded, his brows furrowing in confusion. What did that have to do with anything at the moment? There were two crazy women planning the murder of his best friends sitting only a few feet away from him.

“The little raven king?” Neeve asked. “The only true competition. Do you think you have enough power over him to lure him here?”

Ronan wasn’t sure who was holding on more tightly to the others hand at that point: Him or Blue.

“I think that might not be necessary,” Henrietta said, and Blue’s eyes widened impossibly. Ronan’s hand began to hurt as everything else in his body went numb.

A door opened in the room above them and they heard Piper stepping out. “Neeve?” she asked. “You might want to see who’s planning on paying us a visit.”

 _No._  They had  _not_  come now that this place meant mortal danger for Gansey.

“Ronan,” Blue swallowed, “Gansey’s on the death list.”

* * *

“Okay boys, I don’t have the whole day to play James Bond with you,” Helen said when the blades had finally stopped and she had slunk the headphones off to her neck. She turned around so she was half facing Adam, who was still looking into his scrying bowl.

Right before they had landed, it felt like he had suddenly been catapulted out of the vision, something that had never happened before. The ley line was close, close enough that he could feel it like power charging through his veins, but it was flickering. It was as unsteady as he’d felt when Ronan had caught him.

“So how are we going to do this?” Helen asked and gave Gansey an expectant look, who looked at Adam in turn.

“Which direction is their camp from here?”

“Northwest,” he said, but when he wanted to point at it, he found that he couldn’t feel it anymore. “Directly on the ley line,” he added as an afterthought.

Gansey was already wrestling with his EMF reader. “I’d say we circle the camp, but…”

Helen raised one neatly trimmed eyebrow. “If we’re not back by midnight mom is having my head,” she said, “and I need Christmas to go well this year.”

Gansey nodded. Adam decided not to ask.

“But we can’t just go right in, we don’t know exactly where they are, and I think we should avoid any sort of confrontation,” Gansey said and caught his gaze.

A sudden shock went through Adam that made him sit up straight as a rack and his hairs stand on end. A vision of Blue and Ronan, their faces pressed against a small cellar window threw itself upon him, just to then go into a direct zoom out, showing a way through the woods exactly to the helicopter.

He blinked a few times. Helen was leaning in close to him. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Sure this vision thing doesn’t mess with your consciousness?”

Adam nodded and tried not to squirm under the hand she had placed on his knee. He looked into Gansey’s worried eyes.

“They’re in the basement. It has a window that’s facing towards the woods if we follow…” He looked out of the heli and spotted an entrance into the forest. “This way.”

“Okay,” Gansey said, and got ready to go.

“That’s it?” Helen asked. “That’s the plan?”

She didn’t seem nearly as convinced as her little brother, but Adam knew she couldn’t be. She hadn’t been there when Gansey and him had fought their way through an underground cave, when they had stood up for each other, when a brick had nearly killed him but didn’t, when Gansey had turned to him when he was at a loss.

Adam was safe, and in his company, so would be Gansey, and so would their friends.

“I’m not sure if I like this,” Helen said when she slid out of the helicopter behind Gansey. Adam followed her with shaking knees – even if he hadn’t been mentally present, the ride had still worn him down.

“Do you want to stay here?” Gansey asked Helen and helped Adam onto the ground.

Helen’s eyes slid over the place where their hands connected naturally, and then to Gansey’s face, the question in her eyes clear as day.  _You trust him? Irrevocably?_

Gansey straightened his back and slightly inclined his head.

Helen breathed in and tightened her coat around her. “No,” she said, “let’s do this.”

* * *

 

Ronan punched the wall. “Damnit!” he cursed, loud enough for Blue to flinch again.

“I can’t believe they’re so careless!” He shook out his hand, but the tension didn’t leave his body.

Blue was ready to snap at him and tell him how unnecessary it was to get violent in a situation they couldn’t change, because it was the last thing she needed on her plate then, but she decided to try and calm him down instead.

“I don’t think they’re careless,” she said. “They’ve simply come to free us.”

And as she said it, the words became true in her heart. She almost hadn’t believed that she would see Gansey again until New Year’s.

“‘Simply come to free us’?” Ronan crossed his arms. “Maggot, you’re supposed to be the reasonable one here, do you honestly think Adam and Gansey can just march through the door and be like ‘Howdy Neeve, well, this was a hell of a ride, but we’re taking our friends home with us now, cheerio and have a very merry Christmas’ or what?”

Blue rolled her eyes. “You know they wouldn’t do it like that. It’s Gansey and Adam we’re talking about, I’m sure they have a plan.”

Ronan shook his head and marched over to look out of the window. Blue realized for the first time that the window had a handle and spanned from the top of Ronan’s head to just over his chest. An idea came to her head.

“But you have to admit it would make the whole thing easier for them if we met them halfway,” she said.

Ronan turned around. “What?”

Blue walked over and tried the handle. It was locked, but the glass didn’t look like they couldn’t smash it.

“I mean, have we ever actually tried to escape?” She looked over at Ronan again.

Ronan put his palms flat against the glass and pressed a little. “You mean we should literally meet them halfway?” The glass didn’t budge, but it was just one layer.

Blue shrugged, already debating in her head what she could wrap Ronan’s knuckles with if he punched them through the window. “Do we have anything to lose?”

“You mean apart from the relative freedom to move and not be chained against a wall and full access to our mental capacity?” he drawled. “Nah, you’re right, nothing at all.”

Blue elbowed him in the side. His hands were still splayed across the window. “Your optimism is always so refreshing,” she teased. “How did Gansey even find you two skeptics?”

“Very funny,” Ronan said and shoved her back. There was a dim sound from upstairs followed by laughter.

Blue’s heartbeat sped up. “I don’t want Gansey to die,” she whispered, her tongue suddenly dry and the air stuck in her throat. She didn’t know how much time there was left for him, and even if it meant that she might be the one to kill him, she didn’t want him to be sacrificed for someone else to achieve his goal.

Ronan picked up a little twig from the corner. “Let’s make a plan, then,” he said and sat cross-legged on the floor, patting the space next to him. “We’re getting out of here, maggot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm in love with Adam's and Gansey's friendship, but then Blue and Ronan's friendship name has literally 'bro' in it. [Thoughts](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask)?


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  ~~Did I say hope was my thing?~~  
>  Thanks, alchemistique x

“So the children are coming to play all on their own?”  Neeve asked in a dreamy voice, still staring into the bathroom mirror Piper had used to scry just minutes before.

The only thing Piper had felt was a little shift in the energy they were surrounded by day and night, like someone was poking at it with a stick.

So she’d sat her nail polish down and used the mirror to show her the energy around their clearing, and just as she had suspected, there was a helicopter coming down, and something in it affected the energy around them.

“Looks like it,” she said with a shrug, where she was leaning against the door. At this point, she didn’t care about anything anymore, she just wanted out of this place, and the sooner this whole ritual and Glendower finding business was over, the better.

Neeve turned to her with a wide smile. It seemed like Henrietta was rubbing off on her. “I like this,” she said.

“I don’t.” Piper frowned and pushed herself away from the door. “These kids mean trouble, I swear.”

She didn’t have to turn to feel Henrietta come up behind her, the look Neeve gave her over Piper’s shoulder said everything. Underestimation was always a thing Piper had been able to use to her advantage, but in a house with two mad women it sucked a lot.

“Be that as it may,” Henrietta said, and Piper could hear the belittling smile, “how about I set up everything for the ritual, Neeve will prepare herself to draw energy from every source she can, and Piper, you can go and fetch our hostages. We’d want them to be present for the sacrifice, no?”

Neeve nodded absent-mindedly and Piper pushed past Henrietta on her way to the tiny room in the basement they kept the two kids in.

Sacrificing a seventeen-year-old only seemed like a tragedy if you had an emotional attachment to them, but Piper had a hard time remembering why she had agreed to stay with Neeve and this blood-thirsty creature that seemed to take over her soul in the first place.

“If I make it out of here alive,” she mumbled to herself as she started grabbing for the keys, “it’s going to be solo projects from now on.”

* * *

Adam stopped short when the path took a slight downwards turn. The sun was low over the trees and he had to squint to see the clearing behind the small recess in the ground.

“It’s there,” he said over his shoulder, where Gansey and Helen had an equally hard time making it out.

“So what do we do now?” Helen whispered.

“Circle the camp?” Gansey suggested, but he waited for Adam to make a decision. He wished liked never before that Adam could just see what he saw in him. It was eerie how well-made for leading he was.

“Let’s hide there and wait for the sun to set completely,” Adam said and pointed at a huge juniper bush that was just behind a few trees, shielding them from direct view from the clearing.

“But can we see anything from here?” Gansey asked once they had settled down and tried to peek through the twigs.

“Patience, little brother,” Helen said with a small smirk and patted his leg.

Just then there was a sudden crack from the trees in front of them and they fell silent. Gansey could feel his heart in his throat. What was that?

“On three,” they heard someone whisper from a distance, “one – ”

“It’s Blue and Ronan,” Gansey said, louder than intended, on the verge of getting up. They were there! They were alive!

“Shh,” Helen hissed and clamped his mouth shut, pulling both him and Adam down so that they were nearly lying on the ground.

“Two,” Blue continued. From what Gansey could see, they were standing behind a bungalow and about to run straight towards them.

“And thr – ” But before she could finish counting someone came up behind them.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Piper interrupted her and grabbed both of their collars, a devilish smirk on her lips. All three of them behind the bush sucked in a breath.

“Run, Blue!” Ronan yelled and grabbed her sleeve. He shook off Piper’s hand and set off, but his hand slipped away from Blue’s sleeve as Piper pulled her in even closer.

“I would think twice before doing that,” she hissed and got out a knife from her pocket, pressing it against Blue’s throat.

Ronan stopped in his tracks. Go, Blue mouthed, even as she was trying to hold her head back as far as possible.

Helen stifled a gasp. Gansey could feel his blood running cold and didn’t dare to look at Adam. Ronan was about 50 meters away from them, if he ran now, he could probably make it to the woods and Piper wouldn’t be able to stop him without letting Blue go.

But he wouldn’t do that.

The tension in Ronan’s shoulders was so high-strung it looked like they might snap any moment then.

“I didn’t think so,” Piper chirped and moved the knife from Blue’s throat to her back. Blue was trembling so much it looked like she might fall over.

Then Piper pulled out a gun with her other hand and pointed it at Ronan. “You two troublemakers didn’t even come close to knowing what you’re dealing with here,” she said.

Ronan’s chest was heaving.

“Well, move!” Piper directed and ushered both of them towards the other side of the bungalow.

Gansey didn’t think he had ever seen Ronan this defeated. Only when they were out of view did he remember to breathe again.

Adam blinked once. Then he just continued to stare ahead, unmoving.

“Shit,” Gansey whispered. He didn’t know if he cursed because of the situation they were in or because he had realized that Piper was right: They had no idea what they were dealing with.

Adam breathed out slowly. “I know.”

Helen reached out to both of their shoulders. “I have a feeling our plan is insufficient,” she whispered.

Adam still wasn’t moving, but Gansey shook his head. “We have to go in there,” he insisted. “It’s my fault that they’re in this situation, if I hadn’t taken Blue to that cave she wouldn’t have been abducted and if I had listened to Ronan we could’ve stopped this weeks ago.”

“No, Dickie, listen to me,” Helen hissed. “I Have A Feeling Our Plan Is Insufficient. And that means we’re not doing anything until we’ve gone back, revised it and called for help!”

“Clever girl,” a voice behind them said, and whatever Gansey had wanted to reply died on his tongue.

Adam, Helen and Gansey turned around to find Henrietta standing behind them with arms crossed and her face pulled into a morbid smile.

“But I’m with Gansey on this one,” she went on, “you really have to go in there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [...yeah.](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask)


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Someone will die in this one, but without giving too much away, this work still isn't rated "Major Character Death" - I'm not Maggie Stiefvater.
> 
> [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique) is a star.

A cutting chill hung in the air as the sun set over the clearing and coated everything in an eerie gloom. Blue bit her lip and crossed her arms against the sharp gust of wind, as Piper still held her in place with a knife.

Ronan had been forced to sit on the ground with his hands tied behind his back and glared at Neeve, who was walking in circles around the pentagram.

“Neeve?” Henrietta’s voice wafted over the clearing. “Can you help me for a second?”

Neeve gathered her skirt, nodded to Piper and hurried into the woods. When she came back with Henrietta, there were three seemingly lifeless bodies floating in front of them, two male and one female.

It took Blue a second longer than Ronan to realize who it was. “No!” he shouted in anger and sprang to his feet.

The three bodies were Adam, Helen, and Gansey. All hopes Blue had left sank. Only minutes ago she had still been hoping for them to come up with a plan to take them home, but there they were, captured and tied up just like her and Ronan had been.

“Down, boy!” Piper hissed, and dragged Blue over to push Ronan down to the ground on his shoulder. The knife scraped at the skin of Blue’s collarbone and her heart began to race in fear.

Neeve dropped Adam and Helen next to Ronan and slapped both of them in the face to wake them up while Henrietta propped Gansey up in the middle of the pentagram and pinched his cheeks to wake him up.

Blue glanced over to where Ronan, Adam, and Helen were now leaning against each other. Where there had been cold determination in Ronan’s gaze a few moments ago it had now been replaced with hopeless defeat that was only mirrored by Adam’s.

Helen looked on in confused terror, an expression that was not made for her features. Blue assumed she knew of rituals Gansey had told her about, but she must’ve never believed him even for a second, she realized.

Finally, Blue shifted her gaze over to where Gansey was standing, smiling still, in spite of everything.

“Look what the tide brought in,” Piper snorted behind her, and Blue wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a joke.

Neeve let out a pearly laugh and clasped her hands together, before motioning for Piper to bring Blue a little closer.

“Now cheer up, little girl,” Henrietta cooed with a menacing smile when Blue glared at her. “It’s nearly Christmas, and we decided to fulfill your biggest wish a little early!”

She believed that was the moment her heart missed a beat. “What?” she asked.

“He was the first and only vision you ever had,” Neeve said and patted her shoulder, “and it’s about to become true. Blue, I want you to kiss Gansey as a sacrifice to Cabeswater.”

Gansey tensed up as Neeve moved back to him and caressed his face. “I’m sorry, my boy,” she said, “but it was only ever going to be either you or me.”

“Cabeswater is not going accept this sacrifice,” Adam bellowed. His voice sounded hoarse, and Blue looked at him with a pained expression.

Adam, who had known about Gansey’s death for three months now but not that he was friends with the most likely cause of it. Blue couldn’t have imagined a worse way for him to find out.

Neeve tsked at him. “We’ll let Cabeswater decide for itself, won’t we?” Her smile resembled a self-sufficient cat after it had caught the mouse.

Adam was about to reply something, but Ronan nudged him with his shoulder and he stopped mid-breath. There were tears in Ronan’s eyes as he focused on Gansey and nodded slightly when their eyes met.

Adam let out a shaky breath and closed his eyes, before nodding at Blue and Gansey as well, and leaning back against Ronan, overcome. It was all that needed to be said.

 _That’s all there is._  Blue didn’t want to cry.

Piper jostled her from behind with the knife. “Come on now, we haven’t got all night,” she said.

“Then why don’t you just stab him?” Blue shouted, half-turned to look at Piper standing with the knife behind her, her lip trembling. Henrietta loosened her grip on Gansey’s wrists a little and sighed.

Piper scoffed. “And miss this angst fest? Are you kidding?” She sounded incredulous, and Blue could feel cold, numb dread welling up in her. What would Piper do to her if she refused? What would Henrietta do to Gansey?

Two tears slipped from her eyes, silently, but she was too aware of all the eyes on her to do anything about it.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered as Henrietta urged Gansey closer to her. The look in his eyes was gentle, calm.

He pressed the backs of his fingers against her cheek, and from that moment on, she was unable to hold the flood of tears about to pour down her face back any longer.

“It’ll be okay,” Gansey whispered, so close. His lips were only inches from hers, and she so wanted to kiss them, if only to make it better for this split of a second, but oh, how much worse it was all going to get.

“It’ll be alright,” Gansey swallowed, and the look of gentle determination in his eyes, even with Henrietta threatening him from behind made her feel like someone was cracking her heart open.

 _I have known it from the start,_  she thought, as she was fighting down a hysteric cough, _I couldn’t have stopped it. But I’ve got no one but me to blame for,_  she angrily wiped at her tears and focused on the warm brown of his eyes again,  _falling in love._

Piper cleared her throat behind her, but Blue was lost in Gansey and the small sigh that elicited from his lips as he seemed to be drinking in her gaze, her smell, her presence.

An overwhelming trace of mint clung to his sweater just like she was clutching it between her cold fingers, and Blue felt her knees getting weak.

“I’m ready,” Gansey took a deep breath, his eyes never leaving hers. “You can kiss me now, Blue.”

She wanted to shake her head, protest and scream at Piper and Henrietta and most of all Neeve, but the longer she stood there, with him in anticipation, so close, so warm and ready, she knew that this particular vision had to come true.

She moved her hand from where she had them fisted in his sweater to his cheek, the other to his hip. Then she closed her eyes, letting the last tears drop on the ground and pressed her lips against Gansey’s.

It was all she had imagined it to be, and yet so much more and so much less. Having him so close made her dizzy with want, but the desperation with which his lips moved against hers, the taste of anguish mixed with her tears, was more bittersweet than she had dreaded.

His lips were soft and his breath warm, their hearts reverberating in unison as they clung to each other.   _If I let go_ , she thought,  _I can never have this again._

But she had it, she had been allowed, this once, and it was everything.

Gansey broke the kiss after what had seemed like an eternity and the space of a heartbeat at the same time, and Blue didn’t dare open her eyes.

If he was to die right there and then, how could she see his face and not feel the guilt crush until she’d sink down next to him, a mock-up Juliet too scared to do the same to herself as she had done to her lover?

Blue moved her hand to his chest where his heart was still pounding like a wild animal trapped in a cage, and she would not take it away until she could not feel a single beat anymore, she swore herself. If it was going to be the end, she was going to be there for him.

“Why doesn’t this work?” a female voice said through gritted teeth from behind Gansey.

Blue cracked one eye open. Gansey was standing in front of her, sickeningly pale apart from a red tinge high on his cheekbones, breathing heavily, but alive.

She opened both of her eyes, incredulous, and felt Gansey’s heart do a little somersault. It didn’t work. Why hadn’t it worked?

“Arrgh!”

Blue winced and withdrew her hand from Gansey’s chest at Neeve’s groan. Her aunt had her perfectly lovely hands pressed against her temples like she was fighting off a migraine while muttering to herself.

Blue tried to even her breath and stole a glance at Gansey. Maybe he wasn’t her true love then, but it didn’t matter in this moment, because they were all still alive, and that meant they could still escape. If only –

“Enough!” Neeve seemed to silence the voices in her own head as her head snapped up and she fixed her glare on Blue. “It doesn’t matter! Your kiss has lost its deadly touch, but it doesn’t matter! I don’t have to sacrifice him, I can sacrifice anyone!”

She broke into a manic laugh that made shivers crawl down Blue’s spine. “I can sacrifice ALL OF YOU!” Neeve screamed, the echo reverberating from the trees.

The following silence was palpable.

“But you won’t,” a voice said behind her, and Blue heard the familiar click of a gun. She didn’t know whether to laugh or stop breathing: Behind Neeve, Dean had appeared out of the fog in his usual charcoal jumper, a revolver in his hand and a grim expression on his face.

And then everything happened far too fast for Blue to process correctly: Calla seemed to appear out of nowhere, elbowing Piper in the face and then kicking her in the stomach to make sure she stayed down, while Maura set to work on the others’ handcuffs before rushing to Blue’s side while knocking over the big candle and casting all of them in darkness.

Blue felt as stunned as Neeve looked then, as she watched Calla jump over to Henrietta trying to incapacitate her as she had done with Piper. But Henrietta was quick.

She dodged Calla’s punch and appeared at Dean’s side the next second.

“Watch out,” Ronan shouted as the Gray Man pulled out another revolver to aim at her, “she has magic!”

The smirk on Henrietta’s face made Blue sick to her stomach, and she reached for both her mom and Gansey’s hand to hold onto. “Guns have little to say here, Mr. Gray, as you’ll notice soon,” Henrietta said, and raised her hand, about to snap her fingers.

Blue looked over her shoulder at Adam. Please let it work, let it work, she repeated in her head over and over. Adam gave her a tight-lipped nod, but his knuckles were white from clutching Ronan’s hand too hard.

“In fact, guns can very easily disappear, no?” Henrietta snapped her fingers.

Blue had held her eyes fixed on the revolver in Dean’s hand, but it stayed exactly where it was. Maura exhaled audibly next to her.

“You sure about that?” Dean said and made a little circle with the gun in Henrietta’s direction. “Still looks pretty solid to me.”

Henrietta was staring at her fingers in disbelief, mouthing obscenities even Ronan would have a hard time coming up with.

“Henrietta, now would be a really good to do something about this!” Neeve whimpered in a high-pitched voice and tried to move away from the gun, but Dean just kept it pointed at her.

“Give me a second,” Henrietta replied, and started snapping again.

Dean flinched a little, but all eyes were fixed on Henrietta. Blue felt her fingernails dipping into the palms of Gansey’s hands as she leaned against her mother. Calla looked like she was about to pounce, and Blue could see a slight sheen of sweat shimmering on Henrietta’s upper lip.

The silence was broken by a sigh behind Blue.

“Guys, I know you all believe in magic, but whatever this was supposed to be, it is now a criminal offense and not going to work with me,” Helen said and patted the dirt from her hands. Everyone turned to look at her, but she merely rolled her eyes, stepped over Piper’s unconscious form on the ground, and announced, “Brother dearest, I’m going to be waiting for you and your freak friends in the heli. Please bring only the unarmed ones.”

 _That’s absurd,_  Blue thought as she heard Adam chuckle and watched Helen waltzing towards the forest, but still, no one was moving.

It was only then that Henrietta let out an animalistic growl, followed by a screeched “NO” and sprinted after Helen. Before Blue could blink twice, she threw herself to the ground and in doing so, transformed her petite form into a fat, ugly, black spider about twice as tall as Helen and blocked the way between Helen and the forest.

Helen stopped short in her tracks, looking back to see where it had come from, and when she turned around again, Henrietta the spider had opened her mouth, stretched out her pincers and inched closer.

Gansey let go of Blue’s hand as Helen started to scream, faced with a deadly supernatural creature about to devour her. But then Neeve pulled Gansey back and threw herself in between Helen and Henrietta, faster than even Dean was able to move his revolver.

Maura clung to Blue’s shoulders like she was about to topple over if she didn’t, and Calla steadied her with a hand on her back.

A long thread of spit was leaking from Henrietta’s mouth, and suddenly it was all quiet again.

“You’re just a projection,” Neeve said in a soft voice, and Blue felt the hair on her neck stand up.

Henrietta hissed at her and Helen backed away with a whimper, but Neeve stayed where she was.

“Piper woke you and you didn’t grant her a favor,” she went on. Her facial expression much resembled the one she used to get when she was scrying, and Blue thought for a moment that she might be casting a spell on Henrietta when the spider closed her mouth.

“You have been useful, I am not going to deny that,” Neeve said, and the spider reached out to touch her with one of its legs instead, but Neeve swatted it away. She drew in a sharp breath: “But you said,  _‘One can dream and I’d not go, one will die – if you say so.’_ ”

The spider looked at her, uncomprehending. “And I say so,” Neeve said and closed her eyes.

It was like in slow-motion that Henrietta reached out with her pincers and cut a single vein on Neeve’s throat. Then the gigantic spider started to tumble, each of its eight legs giving out one by one, until it finally collapsed onto the ground. Henrietta had gone back to sleep until an unfortunate soul would wake her again.

“Oh, Neeve,” Maura said, and her eyes filled with tears as she rushed forward to cradle her half-sister’s head on her lap. Blood was trickling down both their bodies and Blue turned her face away into Gansey, who had brought an arm up around her shoulders.

“Neeve, what have you done,” Maura whispered and Calla stepped closer to her and Neeve.

“I realized,” Neeve sighed, a strange smile on her face, “I never completed the ritual. Not with Barrington. Not with Gansey. My sacrifice would…would put it back to sleep.”

She blinked once and exhaled. She looked at peace. “So now you can…you have to…wake the last,” she pressed out with her last breath and found Gansey’s intent stare.

He nodded serenely, and Neeve closed her eyes for the last time as Maura’s tears mixed with her blood.

Blue exhaled deeply as she felt Ronan and Adam putting their arms around them from behind, unable to move or cry or laugh. She was empty of everything, but until now, that had always meant that she could be filled.

“Excelsior,” Gansey whispered.  _That’s all there is._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff is coming your way.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These are still confused teenagers we're talking about here.
> 
> Close to the finish line - thanks again for all your patience, [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique) and putting up with my unconventional methods of writing everything else before I ever even touched this chapter.
> 
> (Also I'm super tired today which is why you get the chapter 4 hours early.^^)

Adam gave Blue a piggy-back ride to the helicopter, Helen and Gansey walking two steps ahead of them. Ronan had insisted on staying back with the others to bury Neeve and hand Piper over to the police, for reasons he had decided not to share.

A strange sense of weary excitement filled Adam. Ronan and Blue were safe, Cabeswater didn’t take Gansey as a sacrifice, and he didn’t even lose a single day of the Christmas holidays to study. He smiled to himself and looked up at the sky when a single snowflake fell on his nose. It was all coming together.

“Adam?” Blue whispered next to his good ear, and he almost jumped in surprise.

“I’m really sorry,” she went on, “I know it wasn’t fair towards you and we shouldn’t have kept it a secret, too. It just sort of happened. But that’s no excuse. We should’ve told you, but we didn’t want to hurt you, and I think we’ve only made it worse. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, Blue,” Adam whispered back and gripped her legs a little tighter. Being held captive had worn her down, and her already small body was now almost frail. He considered what she had said for a moment.

Finding out Gansey was supposed to be her true love had hurt, the two of them having that figured out already, too. But then, Adam was a different person from when Blue had broken up with him.

He turned his head to look at her. “I’m not mad,” he said. “I think I should apologize, too, I was kind of a dick to you.”

“No, I was a dick!” Blue argued. “I just kept making everything bigger than it was and you have every right to be mad.”

“Alright,” Adam chuckled, “we were both dicks. Apology accepted if you accept mine.”

“Alright,” Blue whispered, her breath of relief blowing over Adam’s cold cheek. “Then guess who the real dick is now?” Her gaze was fixed straight ahead at the back of Gansey’s head and Adam had to stifle his laughter before he and Helen would turn around.

All three of them slept on their way to the obligatory 300 Fox Way tea that was quickly becoming a tradition after the life-threatening endeavors they had encountered far too many of in their lives.

Adam found himself squished between Blue and Gansey on the couch, both of them still sort of napping on his shoulders, while Helen called her and Gansey’s parents.

Ronan was sitting in the chair next to the couch and was grinning at him with raised eyebrows, when Gansey’s head slipped a little lower and his hair began to tickle Adam’s nose. Adam briefly considered saying  _As if you wouldn’t like to switch with him_ , but opted for sticking his tongue out a tiny bit.

Helen hung up her call and marched back to the sofa, her confidence restored completely. When she saw Gansey lying on his shoulder a wicked grin appeared on her face that made Adam tense up. “Oh my, my brother seems to be quite taken with you lately.” She crossed her arms. “And his girlfriend. Well, not like I don’t see the appeal, but – ”

She was interrupted by Ronan audibly clearing his throat, then fiddling with his wristbands. He looked up at her briefly, with a smile that was more teeth than anything else before going back to ignoring her.

Helen turned to Adam again, letting her gaze drift between the two of them with a puzzled expression, then she shrugged, mouthed “fair” at Adam and let herself fall into the chair opposite.

When he looked up at her again her smile suddenly rivalled those of starlets on glossy magazines – just maybe a little more fake. Adam wondered what had become of his life and why there wasn’t a single situation involving Helen that he didn’t feel awkward in.

Then Maura came into the room carrying a tray of tea cups and set it down on the table in front of them. She brushed the hair out of Blue’s face and kissed her on the forehead.

“Blue,” she said, “tea time.”

Blue shook her head awake and rubbed her eyes while Adam tried to subtly poke Gansey. He doubted Maura would kiss him awake too.

“How long would I have to be gone so the first thing you offer me when I’m back isn’t one of your teas?” Blue yawned, and Maura gave her a weak smile.

“I’ll have one, please, Ms. Sargent,” Gansey croaked, and Adam hid a smile. No, battling for the approval of Maura Sargent, who could probably sense your sincerity without looking at you, was not something he was particularly keen on anymore. He caught Ronan’s eyes over Blue’s head who did not make the effort to hide anything that was happening on his face. Shit-eating grin it was.

Calla strode in and arranged a few chairs on the other side of the coffee table for her and Maura to sit. It was quiet for a minute while they were all trying to sip their tea without burning their tongue or cringing at the taste.

As expected, Helen was the one to give up first. “So, if no one minds – would anyone care to fill me on what just happened?”

“I was kidnapped,” Blue said at the same that Adam said, “Well, I was possessed for a while.”

“Me too,” Ronan added, “the kidnapped bit.”

“And I just wanted to make things right,” Gansey said, looking into his tea like he had failed.

The expression on Helen’s face went from mildly confused to horrified again.

Maura cleared her throat. “What you just witnessed, Helen, was a sacrifice ritual. My half-sister, Neeve, she was also looking for the dead Welsh king your brother and his friends should be really close to finding right now.” She threw a pointed glare at Blue. “No matter how dangerous that is. The details are probably really hard to wrap your head around, but for now it only matters she wanted to summon a living form of a supernatural location today, and this required a sacrifice.

“These three,” she pointed at Ronan, Adam and Blue, “weren’t fit for it, so she chose your brother instead.”

Helen threw a worried glance at Gansey, who was still looking into his tea cup. “But then why would she want Blue to kiss him?”

Getting her name right on the first try warmed Helen to Adam like none of her actions had before.

Maura sighed. “Blue was born with a curse that her true love would die if she kissed him.”

Helen’s eyebrows shot up and she looked at Blue with wide eyes, then at Gansey. “But how could you…I mean, you wouldn’t know,” she said.

And Blue looked up at her with a helpless expression and shrugged. “Better safe than sorry,” she said.

Helen flicked her hair behind one shoulder, “But, I mean, it didn’t work. Does that mean – ”

Maura shook her head. “Blue also has a psychic gift. When Neeve tried to rob her off that, she must’ve accidentally undone her birth curse, although I don’t know about the powers she must’ve used for that.”

Helen was gaping at her now and only belatedly shut her mouth. “Wow,” she said, and gave her brother a tiny appraising glance he didn’t even see. “At seventeen,” she whispered.

Maura nodded with a much more troubled expression. “At seventeen,” she agreed.

Calla clapped her on the back and leaned forward. “But let’s not talk about that,” she said. “Why wasn’t Henrietta able to use magic anymore if she somehow managed to kidnap and bewitch three of you?”

“We trapped her in Cabeswater,” Gansey said, finally looking up. He was still cradling his tea cup like he had to hold on to something. “Her magic. It was Adam’s idea.”

Adam cleared his throat. “Cabeswater’s, actually.” He scratched the back of his neck and looked up to find Calla looking at him with her mouth curled into an impressed smile.

“That forest must think very highly of you,” she said, and Adam could feel cold leaves lapping against his skin in a pleasant shiver running down his spine. “I’m glad to see how far you’ve come, Coca-Cola.”

Adam looked at his lap with a small smile. He wasn’t sure if he had ever hear anybody say they were proud of him.

“So now we know why my curse didn’t work and why Henrietta failed in the end,” Blue said, “but that still doesn’t explain why it took you so long to show up. If you knew, why didn’t you come right away instead of letting me rot there all December?”

Maura sighed and looked down at her hands, scabbing at her fingernails. “I didn’t know until yesterday,” she admitted. There was guilt in her eyes when she started biting her nails.

“The clearing was made vision-proof by Neeve,” she said, “and I had really thought – well. I thought Neeve would bring you back unharmed in a matter of days. But then your friend came to me in a vision and told me to follow the ley line to where it was strongest.”

Gansey furrowed his brows. “Adam came to you in a vision when he asked Cabeswater the same thing?”

Maura shook her head. “No, the other one. I have never seen him before, but I knew he was your friend, Blue,” she said and shrugged helplessly. “Maybe it was just a benevolent spirit,” she added.

“Did he have blond hair?” Ronan asked. “A smudge over the eye?”

Maura nodded. “Noah,” Blue whispered, and tiny tears began to prickle in her eyes.

Adam placed a hand on her spine and gently rubbed her back. It was nice to know that Noah had finally gathered the courage to present himself to psychics again.

Then Blue started full on sobbing, her whole frame shaking with exhaustion and relief, and Maura hurried over to press her baby girl against her chest, holding her through every heave of breath she was taking.

Adam extracted his hand, gathered his cup and went to the kitchen, where Orla was sitting at the table, reshuffling her tarot cards.

“Woah,” she said, “somebody came here with a heavy soul.” Adam shrugged and sat down at the table opposite her. He had thought that he had wanted to talk to someone, but that either hadn’t been true, or it just wasn’t Orla.

She stacked the deck in the middle between them and placed her index finger on top of it, closing her eyes.

Adam looked at her for a moment with one raised eyebrow, then she blinked open one eye and motioned with her head for him to follow suit. Adam rolled his eyes. “Queen of Swords,” he said without moving.

Orla scrunched her nose. “Let’s see,” she said and flipped the Queen of Swords over.

“I’m still not sure if this is all just some grand trick that you’re all in on or if you guys really have something special in your head,” Helen said from where she was leaning against the door frame all of a sudden. The Queen of Swords. Adam smiled to himself while Orla stretched out the deck towards Helen.

“Well, try it,” she said, “pick a card.” Helen sat down next to Adam and flipped the first card over.

“The World,” Orla said and laughed a throaty little laugh. “It means you can achieve everything you’re hoping for. Or you already own everything you need and want.”

Her eyes came to rest on the small silver band on Helen’s left ring finger that Adam hadn’t noticed before. Helen quickly withdrew her hand and placed it under her thigh. “Alright, alright,” she said, looking a little bit flustered under Orla’s grin.

She waved her hand in their direction. “Go on, I won’t say anything.”

Orla pushed the deck to Adam, who reshuffled it and put it in the middle between them. He crossed his arms and smiled at Orla. “The King of Wands,” he said, just as Ronan stepped into the room.

Orla cocked her head. “Nah,” she said, “The Fool.” Adam rolled his eyes and looked up at Ronan, waiting for him to sit down with them, as he stood there in the door frame, unmoving. It was strange how Ronan was the least psychic person he knew, but at the same time, he never managed to enter a room without making a presence.

Orla smiled sweetly and held the deck out to him. “Do you want to make that decision for us, Ronan?” she said and Ronan gave her a disdainful look. Ronan was about as fond of divination and everything to do with it as he was of his older brother.

Helen scoffed and snickered into her hand. “For someone who’s allegedly psychic, you’re really closing your eyes to the most obvious thing here,” she said, then pushed herself up from her chair when Orla narrowed her eyes at her.

“It’s a shame, I know,” she said, “especially about the pretty one here” – she jerked her head in Adam’s direction – “but I guess you can’t have it all.”

“What do you mean?” Orla let her confused gaze wander from Ronan to Adam and back to Helen, while a savage sort of smile spread on Ronan’s face that Adam couldn’t help but reciprocate.

Helen groaned. “I don’t have time for this much sappiness right now, I need to untangle my brother from the love of his life and bring him back home before my parents disinherit the both of us,” she said. “Want to join, Orla? I can explain what I meant if it really wasn’t that obvious.”

Orla rolled her eyes, but put the deck of cards on the table again and followed Helen out of the room. Ronan let her push past him and then settled in the chair she had vacated. He folded his hands and then unfolded them again, then started biting his wristbands.

Adam wasn’t sure if it was the right time, but sometimes the time didn’t wait for you to feel right. He shuffled the deck anew and spread out a few cards.

“So,” he said and laid his hands out on the table without touching the cards, “do you want to. Uh. Talk?”

Ronan grinned and raised his stare from Adam’s hands to his face. “I didn’t think that’s what we do,” he said, and pulled one of the cards towards him with his finger.

“Yeah,” Adam said. He was wondering if Ronan was going to flip it over.

“But maybe we, uh,” Ronan stopped himself and let go of the card, “should?”

Adam nodded. He suddenly wanted the ease between them back that he could feel when they were on a mission, likes framing Greenmantle or trapping Henrietta. They didn’t do awkward silences, maybe because they both preferred it.

“So, I guess another one of Blue’s semi-relatives has died,” Ronan said.

“That’s not what I wanted to talk about,” Adam said, a little annoyed, although he could see the tension in Ronan’s shoulders again, a slight flair of his nostrils.

“Right, I’m sorry,” Ronan said, rushed, and started gnawing on his wristbands again, not looking at Adam.

“Did you just say you’re sorry?” Adam asked, flummoxed. How often had he heard Ronan apologizing for something, even to Gansey?

Ronan glared at him and crossed his arms. “Well, what do you want me to say?” The practiced anger in his features made him look like he was about to break something. His knuckles were white and slightly shaky from digging into his elbows so hard.

Adam let out a long breath and pushed his arms out onto the table in front of him. Sometimes it was hard to see whether Ronan was angry at him or distressed because he was angry at himself.

Ronan was trying to narrow his eyes at him, but there were bouts of vulnerability written over his cheekbones and if Adam held his stare long enough, there was growing softness that looked a lot like hope.

Adam pushed another card next to the one Ronan had drawn earlier and made a decision: Because sometimes, honesty wasn’t just the right answer. It was the only one.

He drew in a breath and slightly pressed his foot against Ronan’s. “I know, Ronan,” he said, unprepared for the sudden intensity in Ronan’s eyes. Ronan must’ve known he’d known. He would’ve never kissed him if he hadn’t. But then maybe things had changed. Wasn’t that why they were talking? He swallowed.

“And I think I’d like that,” he said and flipped over the last card lying in the middle between them. It was the Wheel of Fortune, an indicator for someone who was moving towards their destiny.

Ronan slipped the two cards lying in front of him into the deck again and placed his hand on the other side of card, so that their fingers were barely touching around it.

He cleared his throat and Adam looked up at him again. “Yeah?” he asked.

Adam nodded and linked their fingers together. “Yeah.”

* * *

 

At some point during her sobs, Maura had handed Blue over to Gansey, so that she could curl against his chest and urged everyone else to leave them alone for a bit.

With all the tension she must’ve felt over the past weeks suddenly gone, she suddenly felt too heavy inside, like there was too much bottled up in her that shouldn’t be.

Gansey lightly stroked her hair and pulled her in against him. To be allowed so close to Blue suddenly, to be trusted with her even by her mother was a sensation that made him slightly dizzy. Blue tensed up a little when he planted a small kiss on her forehead, then breathed heavily against his chest and linked her arms around his neck.

“We’re allowed now,” she hiccupped, then laughed. “We’re allowed!” she said and framed his cheeks with her hands.

Her tears dripped from the tiny crinkles that had formed around her eyes while she was laughing at him, her eyes blinking up at him in a radiant color, and Gansey didn’t think he had ever seen someone more beautiful in his life.

“Yes,” he breathed, holding her close. She was still Blue, nothing more, nothing less, still making him feel desperate even if she sitting right in front of him. “You can kiss whoever you like now,” he said.

“Hmm,” Blue agreed and brushed the tips of their noses against each other. “I think I’m gonna start with Noah.”

Then she wiped away her tears and kissed him again. He pulled her against him until her breast were pressed flush against his chest, and she sighed a little into his mouth. The salty taste of tears didn’t overshadow the sweetness of Blue’s tongue as it pressed against his, making him shiver all over. A stray hair of hers tickled his cheek, and he smiled into the kiss. How wonderful it was to just be them, two teenagers without the threat of death looming over them.

They were interrupted by a polite cough from the doorway. Helen was leaning there with her arms crossed but a warm smile on her face.

“And that was even without the help of mistletoe,” she said and shook her head.

Gansey sighed. “Is it time already?”

Helen laughed a little. “Time to be five hours late? I’m afraid so,” she said and nodded. “Come on, little brother. I promise you won’t have the most awkward story to tell this Christmas.”

Blue hooked her chin over his shoulder one last time before climbing off his lap. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “Merry Christmas.”

Gansey gathered her up in his arms again before he would go looking for Ronan and Adam to say good-bye. “Merry Christmas,” he whispered into her hair. “Maybe you can try calling Santa again. I’m not sure he’ll relent, but he’d probably like you calling him anyway.”

Blue smiled sadly and kissed him one last time. “I will,” she said, “I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty certain Orla and Helen are destined to be best friends in a parallel universe, or a spin-off series called "the super semi in-laws" or something.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I already mentioned on [tumblr](pynchie.tumblr.com/post/123/bc20-5), we all deal a little differently with our best friend leaving for Christmas.  
> You might find Adam's and Ronan's a little unconventional. (NSFW.)
> 
> I don't even know what I would have done without [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique).

A few days after Gansey had left, Blue found herself sitting in the kitchen with a book and a cup of tea, her face propped up by her arm. It had taken exactly two days for her to be annoyed by Gwenllian again.

Especially now that she had taken to entertain everyone with a horrible rendition of  _Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas_ , never without a snicker after the fourth line.

The letters all blurred into a mass of spidery lines in front of Blue’s eyes and she stared wistfully out of the window. It would all be better if she just didn’t miss Gansey so much.

It just seemed so unfair that they had been separated for such a long time, then she got to have him close for the split of a second, and then she was left alone again, with Adam working, Ronan spending lost time with his mom, and Noah yet to show up again at Monmouth.

“Aww, is my little cousin missing her sweetheart, Dick III?” Orla sing-songed in her worst Henrietta accent as she swept through the kitchen to gather a bunch of dried herbs for Jimi.

“You’re not funny, Orla,” Blue grumbled and rubbed over her eyes to concentrate on her book.

“Is he there in your every waking hour?” Orla teased. “Is he the last thought you have at night before you fall asleep?”

“Why are you like this?” Blue asked and looked up from her book again.

Orla messed up Blue’s hair with her hand and tried to plant a little kiss on her forehead that Blue dodged. “Don’t be mad,” Orla said, “it’s sweet. Although a bit unexpected. I really thought you were getting it on with all of them.”

Blue scoffed, gathered her book up and took a yogurt from the fridge. “You’re a horrible person, Orla,” she said and climbed up the stairs to Orla’s laughter.

She never minded Orla’s teasing that much before, but this time she had hit a nerve. That she wasn’t in a relationship with all of them, no matter how much she liked all of them individually, obviously didn’t bother her. It was not like Ronan and Adam were particularly subtle when they told her they planned on Latin study sessions on the second day of the holidays. Who even did that?

But she hated her heart a little for betraying her and acting against all the principles she had ever had. Her, who had always insisted on simply not needing anyone, who had made fun of girls chasing after boys, who had never spoken to a boy without skepticism.

Yet somehow Gansey had moved past that and there had been no chasing involved at all. It wasn’t even that she doubted him for the time they were separated, it was just that, when she truly had nothing better to do, he was always her first choice. She didn’t need him like air to breath, but the momentary loss still made her limbs feel twice as heavy.

She was not able to resist though, when she walked past the telephone room and found it empty. The telephone felt familiar in her hand, and she didn’t think about anything she might say to him before she heard the beeping sound through the speaker on the end.

It was not like she had ever had to. It would come naturally, she knew.

If he had picked up that phone. Blue did not feel like leaving him a voicemail when his phone must’ve rung out unheard, or on silent because he was sitting at a four-hour family dinner, or had to attend a press date or drive a very expensive car that looked a lot better than the Camaro to an overpriced Christmas fair.

Blue knew she shouldn’t be bitter about this, and she wasn’t. She just felt so lonely as her head sank against the wall for second time this Christmas season. She put the phone back and walked out into the garden to sit in the snow under her beech tree and clear her head.

Maybe she would have to make a snow angel like she had done ten years ago.

“Boo,” a voice said behind her. Blue flinched but when she turned around, nobody was there. A chill that had nothing to do with the cold ran through her body, and she realized belatedly that she was sitting on the same ground Neeve had used for her first conversation with Cabeswater.

“Who’s there?” she asked and inched away a little.

“Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man,” someone behind her said once again and covered her eyes. “Or your favorite ghost. I thought the ‘boo’ was a bit of a giveaway, but apparently not to you.”

“Noah!”

Blue cheered up immediately as she turned around and threw herself into Noah’s arms. He petted her snowy hair and chuckled.

“Oh my God, Noah, please don’t ever do that again,” she said. “But how come you’re here?”

“I’m practicing haunting,” Noah said with a very serious face, “and what better house to start than that of a bunch of psychics?”

“Noah,” Blue said and tried to throw a bit of snow at him, but Noah simply flickered away and back again so it looked like it fell through him.

“The ley line is slowly coming back to life, and because I had been drained for so long, it’s overcharging me at the moment,” he said with a smile. “Even though talking to your mom was hard. But I thought I’d visit you now that I can.”

“Thank you,” Blue said, hugging him. It felt a bit like lying down in the snow, but it was the most comforting thing that had happened to her in days.

“I take it we’re not going to make out again even though Gansey is gone now?” he asked and looked at her with an expectant expression.

“No,” Blue said, and shook her head with a smile. What would she ever do without Noah?

“Shame,” Noah said and shrugged, and Blue laughed a little. “Well then – do you want to build a snowman?”

* * *

The day before Christmas, Adam opened his door to find Ronan standing outside, about to knock.

His nose and ears were slightly pink where they were poking out from underneath his beanie, and there was an expression of pleasant surprise on his face, like he hadn’t quite expected Adam to actually be there.

“Uh,” he said, his gaze coming to rest on the place where Adam’s low-hanging shirt revealed the dip between his shoulder and neck and Adam shrugged it up as he leaned against the door frame, which just shifted the collar down to his chest. He was still in his sweats. But why was he suddenly feeling shy around Ronan?

“Your backpack was still at Monmouth.” Ronan stretched out his arm, the bag hanging awkwardly between and separating them.

Adam frowned in confusion. “Thanks,” he said, and reached for the bag at the top where Ronan was holding it, linking his fingers with Ronan and pulling his arm down so he could give him a quick kiss.

“Come on in,” Adam said and stepped back to put his bag away. There were twelve days of school holidays left he could use to study, but right then he wanted to find out why Ronan seemed so shy all of a sudden, stepping into his room as if he was about to break something.

Adam got up from where he had been crouching down and cocked his head to one side, giving Ronan a funny look. His apartment was so small that it was impossible for them to stand very far apart, but Adam would’ve preferred if there was less space between them.

He suddenly missed Cabeswater who had him hovering over Ronan when he was here, nearly perching on his lap and reading Latin poetry to him for hours on end without a single awkward silence.

Ronan finally looked up at him, and it was a little like he was reaching out to touch Adam but wouldn’t, and it made Adam’s heart heave.

He caught Ronan’s hand in his and ran his thumb over his knuckles. Ronan watched the motion with more concentration than he had ever displayed in any of their classes together, and Adam wondered for the first time if maybe it wasn’t just him for whom this felt unreal.

He took a deep breath and placed Ronan’s hand on his waist, moulding it against his body like an anchor.  _I trust you,_  he tried to say with his eyes, silently.  _You let me in your head at its worst. I let you save me. How couldn’t I?_

Ronan’s mouth fell open in awe, he cradled Adam’s hip in his hand with a tenderness he usually reserved for Chainsaw, and Adam felt a deep blush creeping up his cheeks. He wasn’t sure if Ronan was right to look at him the way he did, if he wasn’t seeing something more than there was.

Sometimes Adam asked himself what he was seeing at all, why he had started looking in the first place.

But he didn’t have much time to dwell on it, because Ronan pushed him against the wall then, sliding one hand up into Adam’s hair, their mouths meeting with half a sigh, half a groan.

Ronan’s grip in Adam’s hair made him arch off the wall, his hand holding onto Ronan’s sweater as he opened his mouth for his tongue.

Then he pulled Ronan back against him, sucking on his lip as shivers he could feel down to his toes ran up and down his spine.

Then Ronan suddenly stepped away, leaving Adam panting against the wall. There was fear and worry in his eyes as they fell on the bite mark pulsing on Adam’s lips, and he stood there, visibly conflicted if he had been hurting Adam or if he was allowed to make it right again.

But Adam didn’t take the time to roll his eyes even internally. Instead, he took Ronan’s hand in his and pulled him down onto the bed with him.

Ronan’s eyes went wide when Adam started reaching out for his face with the hand that wasn’t still holding his.

He cleared his throat, but his voice still sounded uncharacteristically croaky when he asked, “You sure, Parrish?”

Adam considered this for a second before placing Ronan’s hand on his thigh and sliding his beanie off. Then he took Ronan’s face in his hands, his thumbs lightly resting on his cheekbones.

“I think we should get comfortable with each other,” he said, and all of a sudden he could feel his heart pounding in his throat. How could he sound so confident about something that had taken him so long to realize?

Ronan swallowed, and his hand inched a little higher on Adam’s thigh as if on reflex. He looked up into Adam’s eyes again. They were so close that Adam could pretend he was feeling his eyelashes on his cheeks.

“But are you – ” Ronan didn’t have to say  _ready_  for Adam to know what he meant.

He lightly stroked his cheekbones. “Someone once told me there was no time like the present, Lynch,” and now his voice was husky, too. He smiled.

And then Ronan kissed him again, kissed him, a force of nature pressing from outside and inside of Adam, want, desire, longing. Ronan pulled him on top of him and pressed his fingers into the dips on the small of his back just over the rim of his sweats, and Adam smiled against his face.

Who’d have thought it could be this easy to feel safe.

Adam linked his legs with Ronan’s and flipped them over so Ronan was sitting on his lap instead. He curled his fingers around his neck where Ronan’s tattoo was peeking out and started tracing where he remembered the stark black lines to be between feathered kisses. He reached into Ronan’s shirt as far as he could and spread his fingers between his shoulder blades, before letting his hands travel up to Ronan’s scalp again.

When he opened his eyes for a second it was to Ronan staring at him with a strange intensity that only came with his dark blue eyes. He stopped kissing him. “Do you want me to take it off?” he mumbled, so low Adam almost didn’t catch it.

Adam nodded briefly, taking the time to watch Ronan while he couldn’t see him do it under his sweater. The slope of his abs, his biceps working, he couldn’t believe Ronan had let him flip them over, allowing Adam to do as he wanted when he could’ve probably overpowered him with ease.

Reaching around him, Adam went back to letting his hands travel over Ronan’s back with better access now that the sweater was gone. Ronan rested his hands lightly on Adam’s shoulders first, but Adam could feel his fingers flexing as they swirled on his back.

He reached up to capture a small gasp with his mouth as he let his hands rush all the way down Ronan’s back. Seeing and feeling him this affected by his touch alone, Adam relished in the feeling swelling in his chest that came from the knowledge that it was  _him_  doing this to Ronan, that no one else could.

Ronan lowered Adam down onto the bed as he stripped off his shirt as well, then sat back up again and let his fingers travel over Adam’s now exposed abdomen, a feather light touch that shouldn’t be possible from someone looking as sharp as Ronan did. But he lost some of it, looking at Adam with huge eyes, the heat of his bare skin radiating between them.

Adam fought down a laugh, his stomach was an incredibly ticklish part of his body, and suddenly a huge grin split on Ronan’s face, the setting sun illuminating the room behind him, and if Adam didn’t know better, he could’ve sworn it did that for him.

Seeing Ronan smile when it wasn’t about something crude was still so rare. Adam felt his heart accelerating by the knowledge it was directed at him, and purely for him in this moment alone, for none of the world to see.

He pressed his hands against Ronan’s chest, revelling in the smoothness of his skin against his rough palms. Ronan shot him a worried glance, as if asking if he should back off, but Adam just blinked slowly up at him, once, and wrapped his hands around Ronan’s head again to pull him down for a deep kiss.

Having Ronan’s body weight resting almost entirely on him should’ve made him feel trapped, but instead Adam felt protected, safe, like someone had wrapped a warm blanket around him.

Ronan’s hands had come to rest on the band of Adam’s sweats and their kisses were a lot slower suddenly, just languidly pushing their tongues into each other’s mouths in long, pliant strokes. Heat began to pool in Adam’s belly and he pushed one of his legs between Ronan’s.

He could feel Ronan hard against his leg, panting, wanting him so much his fingers were shaking slightly over Adam’s pants. It made Adam’s eyes flutter as he pushed his hands down Ronan’s stomach again until they came to rest over his fly.

Ronan pulled back slightly to stare at him with an intensity that made it hard to breathe, and Adam could feel his mouth going dry. He popped the button of Ronan’s pants.

Ronan answered him with a low growl somewhere in the back of his throat, and Adam felt his breath hitch in his surprise at what this did to his insides when Ronan lurched forward to place kiss after kiss on Adam’s neck, sucking lightly as he went along.

Trying not to come right there and then from how hard he was already, Adam tried to strip off Ronan’s pants as Ronan trailed kisses dangerously lower and lower on his stomach, until his face was hovering just under his belly button.

Adam had stopped breathing for a second, his fingers still caught in Ronan’s jeans.

“Take them off,” he said, with barely any voice left that was not taken over by desire. Ronan looked up at Adam and slipped his fingers under his waistband.

“No, yours, I’m wearing nothing underneath,” Adam panted, barely able to think long enough to articulate this sentence.

“Oh my God,” Ronan said and bit down on his lip, so hard Adam was surprised it didn’t draw blood, as he kicked off his jeans.

He had to stop him before he could go back to whatever it had been he was doing, or Adam was definitely going to embarrass himself. He leaned forward and lightly bit down on Ronan’s collarbone, sucking on it to soothe the sting while furtively pushing his hand into Ronan’s pants.

Ronan threw his head back as Adam circled him with his fingers, his eyes closed. “You’re going to be the death of me, Adam,” he whispered, and Adam could feel his stomach caving in from simply hearing Ronan use his name.

He began experimentally stroking Ronan the way he liked to do it on himself, adding a little twist of his wrist at the end and hoping the angle was okay.

Watching Ronan come undone under his touch was something Adam found himself immediately addicted to, from the way his chest was moving to his lashes fluttering over his eyes looking up at Adam.

He reached up to push a strand of hair out of Adam’s eyes before kissing him, powerless, surrendering to Adam completely.

“D’you like this?” Adam whispered against his mouth and only realized a second later that he had let his accent slip out when Ronan made a throaty sound of approval, but took his hand away.

Panting heavily, Ronan stripped down his boxer shorts, then gave Adam a quick kiss before pulling down his pants as well and taking his dick in his mouth.

Adam felt his eyes rolling back immediately upon being surrounded by Ronan’s wet, warm mouth, his tongue lapping against the underside of his cock before swirling around the tip in a pace Adam knew was not designed to make him last long.

He gripped at whatever he could get hold of, his sheets, Ronan’s shoulder, Ronan’s head, before he felt the heat in his belly coursing through him in a rush of excitement and emotion. He came in long waves pulsing through his body as he arched off the sheets with a drawn-out moan.

When he opened his eyes again, he found Ronan lying next to him, his hand splayed on his belly and his eyes still filled with this insatiable hunger Adam found so incredibly hard to place.

He turned to his side to kiss Ronan again. He tasted salty and foreign, mixed with a trace of warmth so undeniably Ronan, it wasn’t an unpleasant experience at all.

Adam reached between them and started slowly jerking Ronan off again, feeling a sudden confidence in the movements, like it was okay, as if he couldn’t possibly go wrong with him.

Ronan whined a little high in his throat and Adam went a little faster, forming a circle with his thumb and index finger whenever he reached the tip and whispered “Come on,” into Ronan’s ear, low and with his best Henrietta accent.

Ronan closed his eyes with a sigh and came all over his belly, Adam kissing him through it.

They lay there for a moment, the cold winter sun painting patterns on the walls that were lost to them as they looked into each other’s eyes. Ronan reached out to brush Adam’s sweaty hair from his forehead, and Adam closed his eyes, drinking in this newfound intimacy he had never experienced before.

Then he reached out over to his desk for some tissues and handed them to Ronan so he could clean himself off, placing his head on his knees to watch him as he did so.

Despite the warmth still glowing inside him, he could suddenly feel the cold of the night creeping in and his teeth began to shatter slightly.

Ronan threw him an annoyed look and then his sweater from the ground, before pulling him close to his chest again. Adam chuckled and pulled the cover over both of them, closing his eyes.

He pressed his good ear against Ronan’s chest and for a second the whole world seemed to have narrowed down to his heartbeat. Ronan let his hand rest on Adam’s waist again.

He cleared his throat. “Are you spending Christmas at Blue’s tomorrow?” he asked, rubbing his thumb over Adam’s hipbone.

Adam had heard only half of it reverberating through Ronan’s chest, so he crawled up until he was next to Ronan again, and propped his head up. “I was thinking about it,” he said, “but I also don’t want intrude after they had to spend so much time apart.”

Ronan nodded to himself. “I was planning to go to the Christmas mass here in the morning, I could…pick you up after?” he said and reached for Adam’s other hand, looking at both of them folded on his stomach.

“Sounds like a good idea,” Adam said and followed Ronan’s gaze.

“And I was wondering,” Ronan took a deep breath, still not looking at Adam, “if you’d like to visit my mom with Matthew and me on Christmas Eve?”

He had said it so quietly, so shyly, Adam wasn’t sure if Ronan knew how much this simple question meant to him. So he kissed him on the cheek, softly, sweetly, trying to convey what he couldn’t say just then with his heart stuck in his throat. He maybe didn’t have words like Gansey, but he was starting to believe that maybe, he had a heart just big enough.

Ronan turned to him with furrowed brows. “Is that a yes or a no?” he asked, and Adam had to laugh a little.

“If I’m not imposing,” he began, “I – ” But he couldn’t finish, because at that point Ronan had already whacked his pillow over his head.

“You’re never imposing,” Ronan growled and tucked Adam tight to his side again. “Don’t ever think that.”

Adam smiled and rested his hand on Ronan’s shoulder, not quite able to place the strange feeling that had settled over his chest. It was like everything inside of him, Cabeswater included, was reaching out to Ronan, creating beautiful sparks of light where they touched, physically and mentally.

“Ronan?” he whispered.

“Hmm?” Ronan had closed his eyes and was already half-gone.

“I hope I don’t mess this up,” Adam said into his neck.

Ronan shook his head and placed a kiss on Adam’s forehead. “I’m not sure you ever could,” he said, and breathing got a lot harder for Adam all of a sudden.

Maybe John Green had been right about falling in love being like falling asleep, after all – if you wanted it to happen, you had to let yourself first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know where he took the time from, but I am convinced Adam would have read _The Fault in Our Stars_ by John Green. [What do you think](pynchie.tumblr.com/ask)?


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up: canon compliant racist and mildly homophobic remarks by Gansey's bald grandma (her views, not my own.)
> 
> Both [alchemistique](www.archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique) and I were unsure how a Catholic Christmas mass takes place - but considering half this fandom calls themselves a sinner, hopefully no one will be too cross.

As promised, Ronan went to mass on Christmas Day, accompanied by Noah, who had shown up surprisingly chipper and solid on Ronan’s way down from Adam’s apartment.

Ronan was waiting for him to say something like Someone got lucky, eh?, but Noah just bumped their shoulders as if nothing had happened and trudged up to where Declan and Matthew were.

“Ronan,” Declan said with a snarl, as if he was surprised that he showed up. For a split second, Ronan wished he had just stayed in bed next to Adam, but then he would’ve lectured him on how it was Christmas and he was supposed to spend it with his family.

Ronan gave Declan a curt nod. He hadn’t promised Gansey he would be civil before he left, but he would do it for Matthew’s sake. He messed up his younger brother’s curls before they went to sit down in the rearmost pew.

He let Matthew sit between him and Declan as usual, and hoped it wouldn’t look to strange that he left a seat for Noah to sit. The last time he hadn’t, and Noah had appeared in the middle of Sunday mass and sat down on Ronan’s lap, an experience so cold, he had no intention of repeating it ever again.

After the first song, Declan turned his head slightly towards them and said, “I have booked a table at the Chastain for dinner,” and turned his attention to the priest again.

Ronan scoffed. He grit his teeth and whispered without bothering to look. “The Chastain? Have you got your  _girlfriend_  with you?” 

Noah elbowed him in the side and gave him a pointed look Ronan deliberately ignored. “Don’t always say it like it’s a dirty word,” Declan scowled. “And if you paid any attention whenever I told you something, you’d know I had broken up with Ashley two months ago.”

It had been Ashley who had broken up with him, but Ronan didn’t want to give Declan the impression he actually cared. “Plenty of time,” he said under his breath, and no one seemed to have caught it.

They fell silent to pray and sing for some time, until the sermon started again and Declan whispered, “Would you like to bring someone, Matthew? And no, Ronan, I’m not even going to ask.”

Ronan smiled discreetly at the high ceiling. He may have had the face of a liar, but it was still entertaining to see that Declan was unable to see what was right in front of him.

Noah leaned over to him. “I would never say anything, you know, but smitten might be the only look that actually suits you,” he whispered, and Ronan scowled into the air. It would be weirder if he turned his head.

Matthew poked him in the side. “Stop with the grumpy face,” he said and turned to Declan again. “No, I don’t think so.”

They got up for the final songs during which Noah miraculously vanished again when they received the host, and Ronan’s fingers began to tingle. The last Christmas dinner with Matthew and Declan had been horrible, so it was with great satisfaction that Ronan turned to Declan as he pulled on his scarf and said: “Actually, I already have plans.”

He relished a second in Declan’s sour expression, but when he caught a glimpse of Matthew’s fallen face, he sighed. If Blue could forgive Neeve because her mother had, then maybe he could hold out an olive branch to Declan, too.

It was Christmas, after all. “But I guess you can come along. If you want,” he added.

“Oh, is it 300 Fox Way?” Matthew exclaimed and clapped his hands together when Ronan turned to leave.

“Who can you possibly have plans with on Christmas?” Declan demanded, his brows drawn together like Ronan had once again done something wrong in his book.

Ronan didn’t bother hiding a smirk when he turned around and said, “Family, Declan,” before tugging at Matthew’s curls and letting a real smile overtake his face. “Family.”

He strolled out of the church, trying not to seem overeager, but Ronan had never been a patient person, much less when he knew what was expecting him.

Adam was leaning against the church wall, one leg propped up against it and looking at the ground with the beanie Ronan had forgotten the night before on his head. The resemblance to one of the stupid cut-outs he kept in his car was uncanny, and Ronan’s heart lurched at the thought that maybe he had positioned himself like that just for him.

Adam looked up as he came closer, with a smile so bright Ronan wondered why the snow wasn’t melting around him.

“Hey,” he said without taking his hands out of his pockets, “Merry Christmas.”

Ronan smiled, vaguely aware that Matthew and Declan had to be watching, and leaned in. He adjusted Adam’s collar for a minute before getting so close that Adam could feel his breath tickling his nose.

“Merry Christmas to you, too.”

And if not only for the brilliant feeling of Adam’s (definitely less chapped) lips against his, Ronan mused, he would kiss him against churches, in the snow, in public, on Christmas Day and every other day of the year again and again, if it meant he finally had the affirmation that Declan definitely had a girly gasp.

Matthew was probably cooing, the little fucker.

* * *

Gansey’s Christmas holidays were always filled with a sense of anticipation as well as his perpetual restlessness, and if anything, it had only gotten worse that year.

The snow had fallen white and thick all around their house, and his parents were hosting soiree after soiree, so that most times he found himself occupied by smiling and talking to a charming old lady about Christian values and how his morals had all stayed intact, while he yearned to be somewhere else. His mother had a strict no phones policy at such an event, and he was not skilful enough to hide it in his clothing like Helen.

And when he wasn’t doing that, he tried to read in his room, but it didn’t feel the same without the slightly dusty smell of Monmouth around him, and even his Christmas favorites like Dickens appeared to him like coffee gone cold. Slightly unappealing at first, and then simply unbearable when he found that for the first time in a year, he was bored.

But even when his father had caught on and tried to have “talk from man to man” with him over a glass of expensive whiskey next to the fireplace, he found himself unable to express what he was feeling beside that. Helen and him had sworn each other not to say a word about what had happened on their flight back, but while Helen was a practiced casual liar, it made him feel out of place and estranged from his family.

And it all got a lot worse when his grandparents came for brunch on Christmas Day before church.

“You would not believe what happened to me,” his grandmother Edith, who was bald and had a habit of speaking in a loud pearly voice that was impossible to ignore, shouted at Gansey’s mom while spreading chicken liver-port pâté on her cracker. “I was going for my routine treatment at the MedStar the other week, and while I am sitting there waiting for my physician, one of these colored kids walks in and says: ‘How are you today, Mrs. Gansey?’ So I obviously assume she is the nurse and reply, ‘Oh, I can’t complain, do you know when the doctor is going to come?’ and she just gives me a very nasty look and responds: ‘I am your doctor, Mrs. Gansey.’”

She shook herself as if she had experienced a bad memory and her arm rings rustled slightly. “Now I’m not going to share my opinion on the legal case here, but at the MedStar! Can you imagine?”

Gansey was gripping his cutlery a little tighter and tried pressing his feet into the earth. He tried to fight his face from cringing, but found it harder than usual to put a good face on the matter. He had been around people that he could be completely honest with at all times, and it pained him how little his family as close as his grandmother understood of the world at large.

He swallowed one of his canapés before he would say anything to his grandmother’s face, but even the cinnamon on top of it did not make him feel any more in the mood for Christmas after this.

Edith patted herself on the chest and shook her head before she said: “But there are too many things wrong with this world for us to fix, isn’t that right, my dear?” She raised her champagne flute towards Gansey’s mother, who smiled stiffly.

Helen, who was sitting next to Edith, caught Gansey’s frustrated stare and rolled her eyes, momentarily distracting him.

That’s why it caught him off guard when Edith jostled slightly forward in her chair and focused on Gansey. “But what I have been dying to know, Richard my boy, is there a young lady in your life that you’re going to make Mrs. Richard Gansey III one day?”

Gansey nearly choked on a sausage roll.

“Mother, he is seventeen!” his dad cut in and dabbed his upper lip with a porcelain white napkin. Helen began to laugh heartily, which she then tried to cover with small coughs when Gansey glared at her.

“Well, from what I’ve seen,” she began, and Gansey begged with everything in him that she was not going to mention Blue and everything to do with it, “Dickie here is far more concerned playing dad for his two friends, truly the cutest gay couple you have ever seen, mom. So protective over each other, and awkward, too! It’s adorable.”

It got very quiet at the table all of a sudden and Gansey just sat there, gaping at Helen. She smiled at him sweetly and popped a tiny pancake with cream cheese and salmon into her mouth.

“Ronan and Adam are not…” He stopped himself, when Helen’s grin turned wolfish and her eyebrows started to rise slowly.

Ronan and Adam. How could he have been so  _blind_?

He cleared his throat and took a swift look around the table. Everyone was turned towards him, his other grandma even had her mouth hanging open.

Then Edith started angrily picking at her bread again and mumbled: “I have always known it. The homosexual agenda is everywhere, I have been telling you this for years. Just be careful, Richard, this is – ”

“Mother!” Gansey’s dad interrupted her, and she curled her lip up in a nasty snarl. “This is enough.”

“I have not raised you to speak to me like this,” she said, “as your mother I am entitled to an opinion – ”

“It is Christmas and we are about to go to church, I do not want fights at the table where we eat – ”

“This impudence, I dare – ”

“Actually,” Gansey said, rather quietly amidst his dad and grandmother fighting, and sat his spoon down. When they both turned to him again, he gave Helen a quick look, who smiled at him and nodded.

“I do have a girlfriend,” he said, “and she’s beautiful, and brave, and incredibly smart even though you would not believe me that a girl can be smarter than a boy; and to me, she is the most brilliant person in the world. She asked me multiple times to spend Christmas with her, and if I had to say right now where I’d rather be, believe me when I say that the answer would not be here, having my family make offensive comments about my best friends.”

His cheeks had started to heat up during his speech, and his heart was beating heavily in his chest. Helen was still smiling at him, which was only a small comfort. He didn’t dare meet his father’s eyes.

Richard Gansey II cleared his throat. Gansey took a deep breath and looked up. What if he was told to go to his room now? But that had never happened in his entire life.

To his great surprise, his father winked at him, an amused smile on his face. He let his hand fall down on Gansey’s knee and shook his head a little when he said: “Well, if a lady has invited you, then what are you waiting for?”

Gansey’s grandmother gasped as all the fight Gansey was prepared to carry out dropped from his shoulders. “Really?” he asked, gaping at his dad, his mom, his dad again.

His dad laughed a little and reached into the chest pocket of his suit to pull out a car key and held it out to Gansey. But before Gansey could reach for it, he pulled it back a little and put on a mock-stern face. “I like to believe we have raised you well enough to know that invitations should always be returned,” he said, and placed the key in Gansey’s hand as Gansey nodded numbly.

Was this really happening? He was allowed to see Blue (and Ronan, and Adam, and hopefully Noah) on Christmas Eve by taking his father’s – he glanced at the key – third-fastest car?

“And Richard,” he focused on his mom, “I’m not saying you could make it back here on Boxing Day, but I hope you know what I’m referring to, my darling.”

His mother’s smile was the warmest he had seen it in a long time on Christmas Day. And she had just invited Blue to their house. Blue. To their house. Gansey had a hard time dealing with all this new information, of how grossly he had underestimated his parents. Or maybe he had to thank his grandmother for bringing it out in them.

“Dickie boy,” Helen whispered and kicked him lightly under the table, “what are you waiting for?”

And then Gansey blinked at her, got up, kissed his mom, patted his dad on the shoulder, and ran down the corridor to pack a bag.

He was going  _home._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~(Yes, if it was Maggie writing this there would be more details on Gansey II's third-fastest car. I might pop her an ask.)~~


	24. Chapter 24

Blue was shivering a little bit waiting for Ronan and Adam in the doorway in only her socks and a dress. She hadn’t exactly expected Matthew and Declan to come along, but when she had seen the size of the turkey Maura had bought, she had had an inkling that they wouldn’t just have two guests.

Ronan and Adam were holding hands as they walked up the way to Blue with Ronan’s brothers behind them. Adam was giving her a shy sort of smile before flicking his fringe out of his face and looking at the ground again, not embarrassed but maybe he felt the same as Blue – not quite sure how to treat this situation yet. Judging from Ronan’s determined half-glare and the look of mortification on Declan’s face, they were mainly holding hands to piss him off, anyway.

It looked good, though. Like it felt more natural than Blue and Adam’s hand-holding had ever been.

She crossed her arms and greeted them all with a nod before she let her eyes settle on Ronan, who was always game for a mini stare-off. “So that’s why you were blushing when we talked about a friendship!” she said.

She could detect a hint of embarrassment on Ronan’s features, before Adam cocked his head and looked at him questioningly and Ronan grit his teeth. “Well, merry Christmas to you too, Sargent. Guess I have to give your gift to Orla now.”

Blue barely had time to roll her eyes before Orla appeared in the doorway behind her. “You brought me a gift?”

Her voice sounded exactly as excited as it usually did when she was mocking Blue with her “strangely incestuous circle of friends” as she let her eyes roam over the four boys standing in front of her.

Ronan sighed. Then Declan tapped on his shoulder and cleared his throat. “Ronan. Would you mind introducing us?”

“Orla Sargent,” Orla said and stepped past Ronan, swiftly ignoring the other four of them to give Declan her hand. “Pleasure.”

Blue pressed her lips together to be able to look at Adam and Ronan and not break out into laughter. It would have been rude, and Adam’s ears were already turning pink from the strain on his facial muscles to not outright grin like Ronan.

Matthew stepped up next to Adam and gave them all a curious look. “What’s so funny?” he whispered.

Adam turned to him and lowered his voice as well. “What do you mean?”

Matthew pointed at his big brother’s face. “Look, Ronan is smiling.”

Adam giggled a little when Blue reached out with her fingers to pinch Ronan’s cheek. Maybe there was even a little dimple there like Matthew sported.

Ronan’s expression soured instantly. “Sargent,” he warned, but the smile was not quite gone yet. It was too late. Blue’s fingers were already there and pressed together a little bit of his surprisingly soft skin into a pumpkin-like grin.

“That’s enough,” Ronan said, let go of Adam’s hand and chased Blue, who was now always giggling madly up into the kitchen where Mr. Gray was watching the turkey. She tried to move past him, but the slight hold up was all Ronan needed to grab her by the shoulder and put her in an amicable headlock, while she was screeching madly.

“That’s not even a proper headlock, Blue,” Dean commented without ever letting the turkey out of sight. “I thought we had practiced this.”

“But Ronan’s is with malicious attempt,” Blue yelped and tried to tickle Ronan into letting her go.

Calla walked into the kitchen and shook her head. “No violence on Christmas, please,” she said and gave Ronan a stern look that made him let go of Blue instantly.

Blue coughed a little for dramatic effect, adjusted her hair into its usual spiky ponytail and stuck her tongue out at Ronan. He made a face at her. Being imprisoned with someone really let them grow on you, even if they had the general personality of a dry cactus.

“Much better,” Calla said. “Here, have a drink.” She took two glasses out of a cupboard and a container out of the fridge and made to pour them.

“What’s that?” Ronan asked when he saw that the liquid was an artificial looking blue.

“A sonic screwdriver,” Calla said and smiled to herself. “It’s like a normal screwdriver, but blue.”

Blue rolled her eyes. Ever since she was both out of mortal danger and not about to kill anyone anymore, her family had resorted to make puns about her name again.

“That has vodka in it, Calla,” Blue reminded her, belatedly registering that the second drink was probably not going to be for her.

“I know,” Calla replied with a grin. “I told you, vodka is like scrying, it really depends who does it – and who mixes it.”

She picked the two glasses up and turned around. “That said, don’t accept a drink from Maura, it won’t just be bad, it might also have strange healing powers.”

“Duly noted,” Ronan replied and accepted his glass with a nod. Calla and him toasted briefly, their fingers only brushing for a second, but it was enough for Calla to choke on her first sip.

“Oh, God, I didn’t need to know that,” she said as she stared at Ronan with wide eyes.

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” Ronan smiled around the rim of his glass. Blue had hoisted herself up onto one of the counters and was laughing into the hem of her dress when Adam walked into the kitchen.

Calla briefly glanced at him before averting her eyes again and giving Ronan the eyebrow. “You’re one to talk,” she mumbled and walked out of the kitchen.

Blue had a hard time keeping herself upright from laughter. “What’s so funny?” Adam asked, which only made it worse. Ronan opened his mouth to explain, but Dean chose this moment to open the oven for the turkey and jostled them all out of the kitchen and into the living room.

Despite having eyed him a little critically at first, Blue was ever so thankful that this thing between him and her mom had turned out to be of a more permanent nature when she found out that he was able to turn out a perfectly fine gourmet meal as long as you played The Kinks in the kitchen enough.

When they were all seated around a large table made up out of the kitchen table and various reading tables they had found in the house and had food on their plates, Blue let her gaze roam over her ever expanding family and best friends, and felt very small inside herself all of a sudden.

They hadn’t left an empty seat for Persephone, but Blue could feel a small absence in her heart that wouldn’t leave her alone.

Artemus was experimentally trying bits of a turkey he had coated in cranberry sauce like a piece of toast and Gwenllian was still busy brushing her hair with her fork, but other than that this Christmas party looked very merry and as happy as it could, Blue assumed.

Declan was doing his best at ignoring Gwenllian and keeping Orla entertained as a conversation partner, Ronan left bits of his stuffing on the edge of his plate for Adam to pick up, who replaced them with small pieces of his squash and Blue looked over to Matthew who was so moved by his brother’s little action, his eyes were almost glassy when he beamed up at her.

All of a sudden, Maura set her fork down and turned to Calla, her eyes wide like saucers. Blue knew that look. It was the “I-had-an-unexpected-vision-and-can’t-talk-right-now-please-touch-my-knee-under-the-table” look.

Calla groaned, and everyone stopped eating to look at her. “Now he better come bearing gifts,” she said into the silence. Blue was confused.

“Who?” Declan asked, leaning into Orla, as Maura and Calla were still just staring at each other as if they could read each other’s minds. Coming to think of it, they probably could.

“Jimi, get another plate and chair, please,” Maura said and got up to leave the room.

“What’s happening?” Blue asked, looking after Maura and Jimi.

“Santa Claus is coming to town,” Orla said with a lewd smile, “to hurry down your chimney, you know.”

Blue made a face at her. She was getting sick of Orla’s idea that being the psychic cousin also made her the funny one. But neither Ronan nor Adam looked any less confused than she was, so she followed her mom down the stairs to see who was paying them a visit.

Maura opened the door, and a strong smell of mint rolled through the hallway, like all those months ago on the graveyard, like the first time he had been to this house.

“I’m sorry that I’m late,” the now so familiar voice said, but instead of having to steady herself on the staircase out of shock, Blue’s knees seemed to get weak for an entirely different reason. “Will it be a problem with the invitation to Christmas dinner?”

Maura glanced over her shoulder just as a smile broke out on Blue’s face.

“I don’t think so,” she told Gansey, and took a step aside so Blue could run the last steps into his arms.

* * *

 

After they had finished Christmas dinner, Adam immediately offered to help wash up, and to Blue’s surprise, all the other boys followed suit. This left the four of them elbow-deep in soap bubbles – Ronan didn’t know how to estimate the right amount of washing liquid and was promptly put on drying duty – trying not to laugh at Orla and Declan saying good-bye to each other. It looked like neither of them was willing to just give the other their number, but at the same time too shy to ask.

The best part was Matthew standing a few feet away, sighing ever so often to make Declan hurry up, as they had to be back in the dorms soon.

“Who knows, Ronan,” Blue said and whacked him lightly with her dish towel, “we might end up being extended family at some point.”

Ronan gave her a look, but then glanced up at Gansey handing Adam a plate and back to her. It was an apprehensive fondness on his features, one that seemed to say “Aren’t we already?” and “Bring it, maggot,” at the same time. Then he whacked her with his dish towel, too.

“That was still wet!” Blue complained and jumped out of the way, which would have made her bump into the table – but the table had moved.

Adam stopped washing the plate he was holding and turned around, looking at Blue and Ronan who were eyeing the table warily.

“What’s going on?” Gansey asked. One of the floorboards behind him creaked and a cupboard above his head opened and closed again.

“Someone’s in the room,” Adam said and closed his eyes. “I know this energy.”

Blue sighed when she saw the worry creeping back on Ronan’s and Gansey’s faces. A year ago, she would have given everything to have her life be more exciting and full of supernatural forces than her family’s, but this Christmas, she was tired of it.

“Should I get a psychic to get rid of it?” she asked and looked around.

“Please don’t,” Noah said and appeared on the kitchen table, “I was just stealing eggnog to meet you outside in the garden.”

“Noah!” they all said at the same time, for and in entirely different reasons and pronunciations.

“That’s me.” He shrugged and scratched his neck. “Thought I’d drop by for a part of the festivities.”

Blue stepped up to the table to hug him, and knew that it was in this moment that Christmas had started feeling complete. “How did you get in here?” she asked. “You were never able to before.”

Noah scoffed, still hugging her. “I appeared in your mother’s dream to save you and you think I wouldn’t muster the strength to show up for the after party?”

Ronan laughed and nudged Noah’s shoulder with his fist, so Blue stepped away and let the boys complete their strange greeting rituals. There might come a day on which she would understand fist bumps, but it wasn’t this day.

“So how long is this going to take?” Noah asked and gestured towards the dishrack.

Adam shrugged. “Fifteen minutes if we’re fast?”

Noah made a pout like Blue had never seen before. “I thought you were a magician,” he said, disappointment heavy in his voice.

“Not like that,” Adam said, and Noah’s face split into a mischievous smile. Blue was pretty certain he was playing to get at something, but couldn’t be sure. Gansey caught her eyes and raised an eyebrow just as Noah vanished again.

“Well let’s just be glad that some people never change,” Ronan said and picked up another plate to dry. Adam and Gansey shrugged and got back to work as well, but Blue was fairly certain this hadn’t been the end of it. She turned to look around the kitchen if Noah was still there, and had to duck under a snowball flying in from the window, which then landed in the sink with a big splash.

Adam jumped out of the way into Gansey, and Ronan ran to look out of the window. It was Noah standing in the garden below, waving with both hands. “Come on, do the dishes later! It’s Christmas!”

Blue smiled. “More like ‘never grow up,’” she said and grabbed her coat to run down the stairs and meet Noah down in the garden, where he had already started a small bonfire.

As soon as the others followed, he handed them sticks with marshmallows on their ends and a cup of eggnog each.

“Is there alcohol in this?” Adam asked and sniffed it.

“It’s from the guy who drank all of his mom’s birthday schnapps,” Blue said and took an experimental sip. “Take a wild guess.”

Much to her surprise, it didn’t taste horrible. Maybe a little too sweet for her liking, but overall nice. She smiled up at Noah who stuck out his tongue at her. It was great to have a friend with mild kleptomania who was a ghost.

Blue leaned back into Gansey and let her eyes drift into the fire. Sometimes Calla would do a Christmas scry, telling Blue something that was going to happen to her in the following year, a neutral but pleasant experience that was not going to impact her life in any way.

“You’re going to vastly enjoy eating spaghetti-os at some point next year,” Calla had said last year, and now Blue thought back to Jesse Dittley, the giant friendly man who had lived with Gwenllian for so long without knowing it.

She wondered if Adam could see something similar. He was smiling into the fire, slowly licking the last sticky bits of marshmallow from his fingers. Ronan was watching him intently, his marshmallow half-burnt in the fire, the eggnog forgotten.

Gansey kissed her hair and then pressed his cheek against her head. “I’m so glad you could make it,” Blue whispered, her gaze not straying from Ronan.

He was so focused on Adam, he didn’t even see Noah gathering a handful of snow and sneaking up on him, trying to dump it over his head.

Gansey pulled her into him a little. “I feel bad enough I couldn’t get you a present,” he said, “it was the least I could do.”

She rolled her eyes a little but didn’t protest. Giving presents what was Gansey did, and not just material ones.

Maura came out into the garden, and all of them immediately hid their eggnogs in their coats, apart from Noah, who was still holding the snow over Ronan’s head and decided to turn invisible instead. Maura raised an eyebrow at the little mountain of snow seemingly floating over Ronan’s head but let it slide.

“Boys, I know it’s getting late, but I don’t want to kick you out in this weather. You can stay in Persephone’s room, if you want,” she said, and Blue’s jaw dropped.

What had happened to “don’t kiss anyone,” and how was she suddenly allowed to have a sleepover with three boys all at once?

Adam was all about to protest, but Ronan nudged him lightly and said, “We were about to turn in anyway, that’s very kind of you, Ms. Sargent.”

Maura looked a little shocked that he was smiling at her, and Blue hid a smile in Gansey’s chest. It was always a bit of a stunner when that happened for the first time.

“You’re welcome,” Maura said, “merry Christmas,” and walked back inside. At this point, everybody except for Ronan was watching the wobbling bit of snow over his head. If he would move just a few inches to the right, he would have to bump into Noah.

But then Noah let them breathe and let go of the snow, spilling it over Ronan’s head like a mini-avalanche, splashing over his coat and into Adam’s face.

“Hey!” Adam said, and put his eggnog down to throw some snow back at Noah, which was hard as Noah seemed to prefer staying invisible for carrying out a snowball fight.

Ronan joined in trying to get Noah, but after his third snowball had hit Adam, he just focused on him instead, tackling him and shoving snow in his face.

Adam was laughing and spluttering of childish joy, and Blue wasn’t sure if she’d ever heard a sound like it coming from Adam before. He sounded happy, and when she looked up to see the fondness in Gansey’s eyes watching his two best friends, her own heart swelled a little more, like maybe she could burst from it, too.

She took Gansey’s hand. “Wanna go inside?” she whispered.

Gansey tore his eyes away from Ronan bending down to kiss Adam’s nose and nodded.

“Stay safe and merry Christmas,” Noah cajoled from somewhere near the fire, and Blue laughed as she pulled Gansey inside. She couldn’t shake the feeling that this was exactly what Christmas was supposed to be like – it didn’t always have to be happy, but if you managed to celebrate it with the people who mattered, all the rest would come along.

* * *

Blue had only winked conspicuously at Gansey when he followed her into her room, then she had opened the window to the peaceful, white quiet outside and climbed out onto the roof in nothing but her dress, an old sweater and a pair of self-knitted socks.

He had stepped up to the window and saw her sitting on the edge of the roof, swinging her legs and looking up into the sky. She looked so comfortable out there, even in the biting cold that seemed to numb every sound. She must’ve sat there a million times, and yet she had cleared up a little space next to her in the snow for him with her hand.

“You don’t have to worry,” she said and turned around to look at him with twinkling eyes, “your name is gone from the death list.”

His heart started to beat a little faster as he climbed out behind her and balanced over the roof to join her. He had almost forgotten that for all the time Blue had known him, she had been certain that he was supposed to die. He didn’t know how that made him feel anymore.

Blue was looking back up at the clear winter sky, and when he followed her gaze there was nothing but an eternity of silence and beauty around them, black and white meeting on the horizon and narrowing his world down to nothing but Blue taking his hand and leaning her head against his shoulder.

He had been born so lucky. He didn’t understand how he kept being given what he wanted, but his selfish heart aching in his chest betrayed him. No logic could’ve kept him from sliding his arm around Blue’s waist and pulling her to him, the two of them against the depths of the universe.

Blue looked up at him and reached out to touch his face, just tracing the line of his cheekbone from his nose to his ear and a shiver ran down his spine as if he hadn’t felt the cold before. A smile split on her face and she reached up to kiss him, her small but warm body pressing up against him under the stars, and it was more than he could’ve hoped for.

A kiss without a kiss had been his all, but it would never compare to the feeling of Blue’s soft lips against his, her breathing becoming unsteady and mixing with his own, the simple touch of their tongues laying Gansey’s insides in knots.

He didn’t know why, but somehow it was _more._

Blue smiled against his lips and let her fingers trail down from his shoulders over his stomach until it was resting just on the tiny strip of skin where his sweater ended. He drew back a little to try and read her face, but Blue used this moment to slide her hand into his pants and trace the outline of his dick with the tips of her fingers.

“Blue – ” His breath caught in the back of his throat. He didn’t know what to say, to do. He was afraid he wanted it too much.

“If you think about it,” Blue whispered and inched closer again, her fingers now gripping him inside his boxers, her breath back on his lips, “it really doesn’t seem like such a reckless thing to do anymore now that we’re just two teenagers, nearly normal.”

Gansey smiled against her lips, but was cut short by a moan. She placed tiny feather light kisses on the corner of his mouth, her hand sliding up and down in slow motion, circling him so tight it was almost painful.

He felt his eyes roll back and hated the noise that escaped his mouth a little when Blue moved to plant more kisses on his neck. There was no stopping her had he tried when she climbed onto his lap and kissed him deeply, grinding herself against him. He shuddered at the feeling of her warmth and cold battling inside and out of him. Open mouthed, he lost himself in Blue, like he was looking for something that was so obviously there he didn’t have to open his eyes to find it.

She drew back a little, a smile of accomplishment playing around her lips and he could only breathe, even as he got harder.

“Can we take this – ” he tried to say, but it was hard with barely any voice from all the rawness. He cleared his throat. “Inside?”

Blue nodded, kissed him between his eyebrows and climbed down from his lap and back inside her room.

Gansey had to lie there in the snow for a second to center himself. He felt like every molecule in him was trying to break, leave his body there to melt into the snow, and he would’ve done it happily. How did Blue do this to him?

He pulled himself back up on his feet again and staggered over to the window, shakily climbing in with wobbly legs.

Blue was standing next to her bed and was just pulling her dress off over her head when he entered, the moonlight hitting the smooth golden skin of her stomach in a light that made her look almost iridescent, unreal. Gansey realized how Ronan must feel from time to time looking at Adam – there was no way he wouldn’t have dreamed her if he had the ability to.

Blue resurfaced from the dress and shed it on the floor, the cockiness from the roof suddenly lost. With a shy smile on her face, she crossed one arm over her stomach and held on to her elbow, waiting for Gansey to step over to her.

“Oh Jane,” he said, and took his shirt off too, ignoring his sticky pants in favor of stepping up to her and taking her face into his hands again, and kissing her until they were lying on her bed, panting into each other’s mouths.

He propped himself up on his elbows next to her face. “Am I crushing you?” he whispered, and Blue shook her head, angling her face away when he started kissing her neck.

He moved down to her collarbone, cupping her breasts with his hands. The skin felt almost softer than that of her cheeks and he had to be careful not to bite down in want.

Blue was silent beneath him, breathing in anticipation as he inched further down her gently massaging her nipples and feeling them harden under his fingers. Her scent seemed to envelope him at this point, something sweet and familiar like cassia mixed with summer and salt of the sea, and underneath all that, something so fundamentally Blue, it was intoxicating.

Gansey reached the edge of her panties, and cast his eyes up to look at her for permission. She hated it when he treated her as if she was fragile, but it still seemed so hard for him to understand that she wanted this too.

Blue bit down on her lower lip and nodded at him, drawing in a shaky breath and helping him push down her pants.

He took her hips into his hands and placed a small kiss on the inside of each of her thighs as she laid back down on the pillow. Cradling her softly, he took deep breaths to steady himself, overtaken by so much want it felt almost painful in his chest.

He wrapped his tongue around her, lapping at her lips before kissing the spot where they met, gently, softly pacing himself, afraid to go to fast. Feeling Blue shudder under his hands was a sensation so foreign, it made him feel helpless and insecure, but also like he couldn’t do wrong.

He tried hard not to get carried away, but when Blue let out a tiny sigh, it was hard to hold back. He sucked lightly at the swell as she wrapped her legs around his neck, trying to get another gasp out of her.

Gansey could feel her shudder under his fingers and tongue, her muscles straining around his head and she arched up, her body a drawn out line in the moonlight that made him lose his pace.

He kissed her again and heard the breath catching in her throat before her orgasm seemed to flow through her like a wave. Holding her through it, he looked on in awe at her parted lips, the slightly dishevelled hair and the tiny noises she was making.

It had to be the sexiest moment of his life when she opened her eyes half-way to look at him.

Blue threaded her fingers into his hair and pulled him up to kiss her, her legs slipping down to settle around his waist.

“I,” she began, but closed her mouth again as her eyes tried to focus fully on his. Gansey waited a little, but for once, she seemed to be lost for words.

He swallowed and pressed his forehead against hers, every moment of the summer in the Camaro, all the laughter and all the pain and all the joy they had been sharing simmering between them in this moment, when he was just feeling her hot breath on his lips and wanted her more than he had ever before.

“And to think I was prepared to live a lifetime without this,” he breathed against her lips, his chuckle lost by the look in her eyes.

“I was prepared to live a lifetime without you,” she whispered and it was almost too much for Gansey just then. Her tiny heart beating erratically against his, he knew what believing in miracles and the wonders this world held could give you, and that a coincidence was never just that – he felt invincible, and this was everything.

* * *

It was in the morning, when the sunlight was mildly tickling Gansey’s eyelids, that Ronan walked into the room to find them there, still drifting in and out of sleep.

Gansey cracked an eye open. Ronan wasn’t wearing more than a pair of boxer shorts and just leaned against the wall, arms crossed, a  familiar smirk playing around the corners of his lips.

Blue was still breathing evenly into the crook of Gansey’s neck, so he closed his eye again and mumbled, “Jesus, Lynch, at least put a shirt on, this is a girl’s room.”

“You mean a witch’s den?” Ronan replied, not making an effort to lower his voice. Gansey groaned internally when Blue stirred behind him. “Also, I would, but I’m afraid Parrish is wearing it.”

Gansey didn’t have to open his eyes to get an image of the shit-eating grin on his face. He was glad that Ronan was better, truly, but sometimes he wondered why didn’t pick a less obnoxious best friend.

Adam stuck his head through the door, his hand strategically placed on his collarbone to cover up a large bruise. It took Gansey longer than he wanted to admit to calm himself, that it was okay, that it was a bruise that Adam hid from him only because he was embarrassed – for all the right reasons, for once.

“Are they awake?” Adam whispered. Well, one decent friend would have to do.

Ronan held up a finger. “Wait a second...now they are.”

Blue made a drawn-out sound of discomfort and pressed her nose between Gansey’s shoulder blades. “Why are you all awake?” she groaned.

“To witness your incredible metamorphosis from a maggot to an octopus when somebody lets you be the big spoon,” Ronan replied and pulled Adam into the room by the hem of his shirt.

“Don’t worry, Gansey, we’ve all been there,” he added with a wink.

For someone who had been asleep only seconds ago, Blue was very quick in throwing a pillow right at Ronan’s head. “I have hereby officially re-evoked your shithead status,” she said, and snuck her arm around Gansey’s waist again, her fingers resting just under his belly button. Judging by the way her breathing was evening out again, she was determined to go back to sleep.

“Still sounds like revoked to me,” Adam said, and he and Ronan shrugged at each other.

Gansey rolled his eyes. And to think Helen found them endearing. “A bit scary sometimes,” she had told a few days ago, “but also slightly sexy, I suppose.” He shuddered at the memory.

But then when he was looking at the two boys standing in front of him in the morning light, he was just glad to have known these two extraordinary young men in the time of their lives.

“Blue, before you go back to sleep,” Adam said, “Lynch wants to go for a Christmas swim in Cabeswater and we thought you’d might want to join.”

Ronan was the only one of his brothers who still kept up with the old Irish tradition of going for a swim every Boxing Day, even when the water was ice cold. Cabeswater came with the added benefit of not having to do it in winter.

Blue just sighed audibly and turned around to press her bum against Gansey’s thighs.

“I think that’s a no,” he translated, “but you two go ahead without us. Although you might want to cover that up, Adam, I’m not sure how well Cabeswater does with damage of its property.”

His attempt at a joke fell flat. Ronan rolled his eyes and said, “All right. Merry Christmas, you two.”

“Merry Christmas,” Gansey whispered back. Adam took Ronan’s hand, already half out the door and replied: “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” Blue said, and Gansey could hear in her voice that she was smiling as she cocooned herself tighter into her blanket, “and now leave.”

Two seconds after the door fell shut, she rolled around again and snuggled up to Gansey, her head resting on his shoulder. He tried to desperately ignored her leg lying on top of his.

“Jane?” he whispered, and let his fingers roam through her hair that was so much softer open like this when she didn’t pull it up in a ponytail.

“Hm?” she said and opened one eye to look at him.

“I told you yesterday that my mom expects us for lunch in three hours, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final thanks to [alchemistique](archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique) and [charmingpplincardigans/momebie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/katilara/pseuds/momebie), who helped me find her.  
> I really wasn't sure if I had it in me to write something that was over 50k, and I don't think I could've without you (even if it was only the feeling that there was someone there on the other side of the world waiting for the next chapter so that I could wake up to feedback on it).
> 
> I was getting a little sentimental writing this last bit - maybe shouldn't have listened to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OefwRG8Q5Qw) the whole time - but I don't even know what 2015 would have looked like for me if I hadn't picked up The Raven Boys on St Marks Eve and read all three books in one week despite all of my final essays. A huge thank you to everyone who keeps this fandom alive until The Raven King comes out, with all your great edits, headcanons, art and fics - I would read nothing but TRC meta if I didn't have a bunch of other stuff to do.
> 
> Merry Christmas, everyone. April 26 will come sooner than we probably imagine.


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